


the way i'm supposed to

by makeitmakesense



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F, also maldrey fwb situation i just realized i forgot to tag it but it moves this plot along, and mal and uma being angsty exes, but theyre so in love in flashbacks i may write a mal and uma fic idk idk where im at right now ok, i realized now as i am more than halfway done i never tagged the actual tropes?, jay nd carlos if u squint like deadass if u squint this is rlly just mal and evie being fckin idiots, mevie/malvie fake dating/fwb/friends to lovers/non magic/high school au, pls read it i promise its better than i make it sound, thats not the point!!!, will i write mal with every girl she locks eyes with ? maybe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:07:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23029831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makeitmakesense/pseuds/makeitmakesense
Summary: Mal shows her dimples, blinking as innocently as possible. “Pretend to be my girlfriend because Uma was making me feel like shit with this whole, ‘Mal, you broke my heart’ thing, and so I was like, ‘what the hell is going on!’ except in my brain because I was not speaking to her at that moment, and she was like, ‘she calls you nicknames!’, so I was like ‘what about it?’, and she was all, ‘How cute! I’m Uma and I want to ruin Mal’s life by making her seem pathetic!’”The taller girl narrows her eyes. “I don’t feel like that’s how it went…”She huffs out a breath in response, crossing her arms over her chest. Leave it to Evie to be logical right now.
Relationships: Evie & Mal (Disney), Evie/Mal (Disney), Mal/Audrey Rose (Disney), Mal/Uma (Disney)
Comments: 38
Kudos: 86





	1. falling for me already?

**Author's Note:**

> title is from happiness by rex orange county which is mal to evie vibes  
> this fic is very much based on the life of me and my best friend who had purple and blue hair respectively when we were younger and met through randomly in the middle of the night and went crazy for each other doing so, and most of the conversations that are sickeningly sweet are close to what we actually said to each other so yuck 
> 
> //tw for alcoholism and short little bits describing homophobia throughout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Much to her surprise, she’s greeted with a random string of numbers and a short, simple,   
>  **  
> _Hey, is this Mal?_  
>  **  
>  lighting up her lock screen. 
> 
> _  
>  Finally  
>  _  
>  , she thinks, her heart fluttering. 
> 
>   
>  _  
>  depends on who’s asking  
>  _  
> 
> 
> She sees that it’s read right away and struggles to press the home button so she doesn’t seem as pathetically desperate as she clearly is. 
> 
> **  
> _Of course, you’d be a smart ass. Might have to just take my hello back._  
>  **

The chance pairing of a peer-graded essay their junior year brings them together. It’s not that they’re in the same class, but that the English teacher they share has a weird rule that grading another student’s work is perfectly fine as long as they aren’t in the same hour, which means that Mal is receiving her paper without the teacher even doing as much as glancing at it. She skims the bright red ‘A’ beside her name with a proud smile, trying to conceal it to avoid showing just how much she put into the topic of what her dream life would consist of. Carefully following line by line, she seeks any corrections that a classmate would have found- not that she would know who had done it as they couldn’t leave any indication of who they were after they were finished- but she can’t seem to find anything besides her grade plastered on the cover sheet. 

Her grin slowly transitions into a scowl, and it’s not that she’s hurt because why would she be hurt that some dumb, annoying, ridiculous idiot would be lazy enough to not care about the trust bestowed upon them to put an entire letter grade on Mal’s report card? A grade signifying the value of something she spent hours upon hours on when she could’ve been doing more reasonable things like throwing herself off a roof or finding the nearest slab of concrete to slam her skull against? She wouldn’t be hurt, that’d be dramatic, and Mal is  _ not  _ dramatic no matter how many times her mother says she is, and so she doesn’t even  _ care  _ when she flips through another page of her handiwork. (...and then another, and then another because if she handed in an essay short of 5 pages she just wouldn’t be who she is as a person.) She doesn’t care enough to hold her breath when turning to the last to face the inevitability of her untouched closing paragraph, she doesn’t care enough to want to ponder breaking into Mrs.B’s desk to see who had chosen her assignment, and she  _ especially _ doesn’t care in the slightest way that would make her eyes squeeze shut to prepare herself for the disappointment that the one outlet she has for her writing to be seen is as useless as everything else she has ever put from her mind into words, and-

She pauses.

Along the blank space below her last sentence, a small note is written in neat cursive that makes her heart pick up a beat.

_ Read this four times over to make sure that there wasn’t anything I could suggest to make this any more beautiful and landed on the decision that there were still no changes to make this more of a masterpiece than it is.  _

_ Would love for you to slide anything else you have for a girl desperately seeking stories to read when she should be asleep into locker 116.  _

_ xx E  _

“Mal, is there an issue?” her teacher calls out, already mostly through explaining the plot of the next novel they’re set to read. 

She’s sure her cheeks are crimson when everyone turns to her seat in the back, the panicked closing of her fist creating a loud crunch that earns a few chuckles. “I-uh.. No!” 

“Very well,” she hears from the head of the classroom. Her face is already ducked down to hide her blush, the rustling of her stuffing her essay into her backpack fading into the resumed lesson plan. 

She makes a mental note to try to avoid making another noise until graduation. 

* * *

There’s a specific short story that Mal remembers finishing last summer about a princess in a tower that she thinks would be a perfect bedtime read. She spends three hours digging through bins filled with old journals to rip it out, and she can’t explain the urgency she feels to share it considering she has exactly two friends in total and hasn’t been on the market for a new one in...ever, but the thought of someone liking her writing is so tantalizing. Temptation made a cozy place in her conscience as soon as it heard the word “masterpiece” in terms of  _ her  _ essay.

Someone…  _ E _ had found her words beautiful, and she hasn’t ever been complimented on anything she’s done since entering high school. In some faraway land in another timeline, she’d pursue her passion of writing and the world would finally hear her voice. 

Emphasis on  _ faraway land _ and  _ another timeline.  _

“Aha!” she beams to herself, flipping open a worn suede notebook that she’d found at a garage sale some months ago. It takes her only a few seconds to find the portion she was seeking and even less to rip it out, folding it neatly three times over. 

_ Put it in an envelope. Write the name. Find the locker. _ She reminds herself of the plan she’d conjured during her homework of her  _ foolproof _ idea to get another note of praise. 

All she has to do is execute it. 

* * *

Her plan isn’t as foolproof as she once thought, and she realizes that after she hears the clunk of her short story falling to the ground in E’s locker after slipping it through one of the slats. 

There is no way for her to get a response. 

She fumbles for a coherent thought in the empty halls because she definitely disguised her mission as a bathroom break and has no school supplies with her besides the hall pass in her grasp and whatever she stuffed into her pockets throughout the day. She could always come back and put her own locker number on a note, but then she would wait for  _ who knows how long  _ thanks to her dumb locker in the dingiest corner of the darkest wing of their school that a majority of the building didn’t care enough to notice. Maybe her phone number? Would that be too forward? 

Maybe she could draw a map to her locker. That seems less creepy than just slipping in her fucking phone number like a stalker. 

But then again, she had been given this locker number from the owner themself, so maybe they want a number in return? It would be easier and there’d be less of a wait. That could be the right choice. 

Mal jumps when she feels a tap on her shoulder. 

“Hey, jumpy, what’re you doing here?” Jay chuckles, Carlos trailing him on crutches a little down the corridor. “Did they finally move you from your other locker? Took them long enou-“

“Jay! You’re supposed to be  _ helping  _ me! Not gossiping with… oh, hey, Mal! Did they finally move your locker from that creepy hallway downstairs?” Carlos smiles towards his best friends, and Mal is painfully reminded that if Carlos is out here going to his next class with Jay, then the bell is about five minutes from ringing. She’d spent an entire period out here.

“No, uh… You wouldn’t happen to have a pen and paper on you, would you?”

And just like that, she’s scribbling down her phone number and spelling out her name below the digits. With a fold and a smooth fall into the locker, she’s waving goodbye to her friends and sprinting towards her classroom in hopes of beating the bell. 

* * *

Mal gets detention after school for the rest of the week because of her ‘abuse of the hall pass’. 

It sucks. She wants to have some complicated way to describe it for her diary tonight, but it just plain old, definitely  _ sucks _ , and, to top it all off, she hadn’t even gotten a text from E to make the crime worth the time, and if she’s really rhyming like that right now then take her out back with the shotgun because  _ holy shit does this suck _ .

* * *

Her phone doesn’t buzz until after midnight a few nights later. She has custom vibrations for Jay and Carlos, so she simply assumes it’s her mother- the only person besides the boys that would bother to text her- finally heading to sleep and prepares for the list of chores she’s going to have to wake up early to do. (Her mom is big on those.)

Much to her surprise, she’s greeted with a random string of numbers and a short, simple,  **_Hey, is this Mal?_ ** lighting up her lock screen. 

_ Finally _ , she thinks, her heart fluttering. 

_ depends on who’s asking _

She sees that it’s read right away and struggles to press the home button so she doesn’t seem as pathetically desperate as she clearly is. 

**_Of course, you’d be a smart ass. Might have to just take my hello back._ **

This intrigues her. No one talks to her like that. 

Well, Uma did when they dated, and that’s what drew her to Uma, that spark, and that’s what eventually led to Mal breaking things off because feeling lonely was easier than feeling whatever was cooking up in her heart, and, god,  _ why  _ is she thinking so much about Uma?

The answer clearly should be that she’s not because Uma’s with Harry, and she has been since a month after the break up with Mal. 

She can even remember the phone call that occurred, remember Uma’s broken, prying voice asking if Mal would be okay if she went out with someone else. Always the stubborn one, Mal defensively spit out, “Why wouldn’t it be?” like her heart wasn’t ripping from the seams- and,  _ god _ ,  _ why is she thinking so much about Uma _ ?

**_Lose your ability to type a response or did you just forget your read receipts are on?_ **

Her phone’s vibrations shake her from her head, and she can feel a smile creeping its way back to her lips. 

_ someone’s a little needy _

_ don’t know if i like that _

Another instant response. 

**_Like you have anything better to do right now._ **

This isn’t exactly untrue, and she says as much. With each text there is a force compelling her to reply, and she doesn’t have it in her to tell it no. 

She’s tired-god, she’s  _ always _ tired- with no friends meaning no social life, a mother that she knows deep down teeters on the line of being abusive and, well, the social skills of a rabid hedgehog. To put it plain and simple, she  _ needs _ this interaction for her own sanity. 

_ that’s fair  _

It’s then that she sees that she has no idea who the hell she's talking to. 

_ am i going to learn your name beyond what i am assuming is an initial anytime soon?  _

**_And I’m the needy one?_ **

Again, like the retort is already typed out, she’s getting teased. 

_ here i’ll show you an example on how normal people begin conversations: _

_ hello _

_ my full name isn’t important so you can call me mal _

She hasn’t had many nicknames in her lifetime. Maybe it’s thanks to the lack of friends she has or maybe the lack of warm, loving figures watching over her. She doesn’t mind because either way, she only uses Mal.

**_It’s Mallory. Did you really already forget how this started?_ **

It’s rhetorical, but yes, her name printed at the top of her assignment did slip from her thoughts.

**_You can call me Evie._ **

_ Evie. _

She knows that name. Someone has talked about that name. 

**_Why are you even up so late? I wasn’t expecting a reply._ **

_ i could ask you the same thing _

Now that she’s actually thinking about it, Carlos said something regarding an Evie and a school activity, and she wishes she wasn’t the scum of the earth because if she only listened to her best friend talk, this case would be closed. How many Evies could there be?

**_Not the biggest fan of getting stuck in dark silence with my thoughts. Your turn._ **

Mal mulls over what to say. Why  _ is _ she even up so late? Does she tell her that it’s basically the same answer? Does that seem lazy? Does it make her seem like she’s trying too hard to be relatable? Does it come off insensitive? Why does she care if it does? 

_ i don’t exactly know _

She takes a deep breath, her eyes getting heavier. Did Evie not also have school first thing tomorrow? 

**_Universe must've wanted to make sure you didn’t miss that text_ **

A smirk ghosts her lips.

_ yeah, i guess so _

* * *

Mal finds out that Evie’s mom isn’t exactly a pristine example, and that’s why she mostly texts at night. 

**_I’m not supposed to get myself involved with friendships, especially with girls_ ** , she tells Mal.  **_Mom says they’re too dramatic, and she has been grooming me to be the perfect wife since before I could talk. She thinks that my dad left because she wasn’t, so if I am, I’ll have a happy little house with a happy little family and a happy little in-law suite in our basement._ **

_ yikes _

Mal is up at all hours because that’s when her best writing is done, but Evie already knows that.

_ my mom says it’s weird my only friends are guys and that if i don’t start making other friends absolutely no one is going to want to be near me _

Less than a second passes. 

**_I do, M._ **

The discomfort that accompanies that letter doesn’t come like she expects it to. She usually jumps to action to correct whoever is speaking to her, and it’s not that Mal is against nicknames, if that’s what you’re thinking. As previously disclosed, she just hasn’t ever had many, but the one she especially hasn’t had is ‘M’ because that was what Uma called her. 

Is it love that’s making her think of Uma? Is it her heart kickstarting for the first time in months? Why doesn’t it hurt when Evie calls her that? Does she like Evie? 

Uma is all she has to go off of. She  _ was  _ her first relationship, after all. When Mal realized that she liked girls, Uma was the one that guided her through it. 

She knows it’s dumb to say she found her first love at fourteen- she really does, she swears- but she did. She found someone that made her want to be a better person, and she doesn’t think that is supposed to change after you grow up. 

But while everything is so similar, so comparable, it’s somehow still different with Evie. 

She thought that it’d be in waves when she started liking someone again, that it’d be how it was when she met Uma. It would build from a tiny spark into a roaring fire that destroys everyone it comes in contact with, terrorizing them, but it’s not. It’s instantaneous; the way her muscles stiffen after typing, and with her lungs longing for air from the fervor of these new feelings wringing them out and hanging them to dry, and she can only grin because she thought that it’d be in waves and it’s not. 

It resembles, she thinks, combusting. Spontaneous combustion. A chemical reaction; one drop of Evie into the pool of her mind and bubbling to the surface is a giddy demeanor and a pull. Her colors brighten, and her presence is soft, and her cheeks are rosy while she sits alone in the dark of her room, up far too late on a school night, just to talk to some girl. 

(Even if she already knows Evie will never be just _some girl_.) 

* * *

She isn’t aware of  _ when  _ she starts sharing intimate life details with a complete stranger in the middle of the night, but it occurs pretty frequently now. 

She doesn’t even confide in Jay or Carlos as openly as she does Evie, and that terrifies her. Evie suddenly knows about her childhood, about her dad’s death. She knows about the way her mother screams until her voice is gone, and how Mal is afraid to drink or smoke purely because she knows that once she starts something to relieve the aching in her soul, she won’t be able to stop. 

( _ i tried once. _ A bottle long forgotten in the fridge tucked away in their garage plucked out the summer before they’d met.  _ it felt so great to be that numb, e. i’ve never felt that free. i knew i would always be chasing it if i started. _

**_That’s not freedom._ **

She chuckled at her phone, bitter on her tongue like the liquor was that July night.  _ no, i suppose it’s not. _ )

Mal confesses to Evie that it’s hard to get up every morning, and Evie reminds Mal like clockwork how proud she is of her for doing it.

Evie entrusts her inner monologue with Mal, too. She describes her mother cutting down her meals, scolding her for the fullness of her cheeks. Her skincare routine takes at least forty minutes each night, and she’s woken up when the sun rises to ensure ample time for makeup. She’s not even allowed to laugh freely, it’s calculated to avoid wrinkles, and it’s when her mother is explaining to her how she can make a man feel confident. It’s only when she calls upon Evie to demonstrate what she has learned that she’s allowed to openly grin in her own home. 

**_That’s why I can’t be around when she’s awake._ **

**_I smile too much when I think of you._ **

Their rhythm is a gentle one, and there are as many compliments as insults. 

For every ‘you are so annoying’, there is a ‘my favorite part of the day is talking to you’. 

For every ‘I’m going to block you and your two brain cells’, a ‘no one understands me quite like you do’.

For every ‘good morning, dickwad’, a ‘sweet dreams, I’ll talk to you tomorrow’. 

They fall into it easily, carelessly swaying along to the banter that dies down when life is a little too hard. 

* * *

It takes them almost two entire months, but Mal does find out that Carlos and Jay are, in fact, common denominators between her and Evie. 

_ they’ve been my best friends since we could tie our shoes _

**_Carlos is my partner in ballroom dance! Well, he was before his severely sprained ankle. This guy, Chad, is his replacement until he gets back._ **

**_Let’s just say I’m counting down the days until the nurse clears him…_ **

**_But Jay just comes to walk home with him after class and flirt with the other girls lol_ **

She can almost feel the light bulb glowing above her head because  _ that’s  _ what she wasn’t listening to! Carlos wanted her to meet his partner for his favorite extracurricular because he thought that she needed a friend that was a girl to relate better to, and Mal promptly told him, “Yeah, okay,  _ mom,”  _ and zoned out the rest of the conversation. 

_ so you’re a dancer? _

Not that she has a thing for dancers because she doesn’t,  _ obviously _ , and the fact that when she’s sad, she goes to watch the pom squad choreograph routines on the football field because seeing pretty girls moving to a beat somehow makes everything better is irrelevant. 

**_Yeah. For the school and separately._ **

**_Mom says there’s no better way to find a prince than to have one literally sweep me off my feet._ **

Mal tries to ignore the way her nerves stand on edge, but she can feel her blood coursing through her veins at the word ‘prince’. 

_ is that what you want? a prince?  _

She almost decides to just cut her losses and go to sleep. Of course, that’s what Evie wants. It’s what she deserves. 

**_Not anymore._ **

* * *

Her father encouraged her writing. He was the one to buy her all her journals, to hang her poems on the fridge. He wanted nothing more than Mal to follow her passion, and after he died, her mother made it more than clear that she needed to find a realistic career to pursue.

**_What do you want to be when you grow up?_ **

Mal wants to go into culinary. 

_ i want to open a bakery _

She can create those sculpted cakes, just like on tv. She discovers this by pure chance, toying around with some of the tools and fondant in her home economics class in the sixth grade, and it’s something she has fun doing. 

It’s a _constructive hobby_ _that she shows promise and talent in that could realistically turn into a career_.

**_Not being an author?_ **

Not everyone needs another book.

_ that’s not a real option, e _

_ baking is something i can have an actual future in _

No one will ever stop needing desserts. No one will ever stop needing her service if she proves its worth to them. 

_ that’s a pipe dream _

She can have a space to create and it will stay solid beneath her because that’s all she could do for the first three months without him. 

She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t speak, couldn’t  _ write _ , and so she tried to do the only thing she had left to distract herself. She created a gorgeous cake, detailed in the darkest of flowers and thorns for his service, and her mother spread the word enough to get her a few commissions. 

**_Don’t be ridiculous, you’re obviously meant to be an author._ **

She cemented the idea into her mind that becoming an author isn’t in her cards right then and there. 

_ i’m not, but go off i guess _

Of course, she always sort of knew that, and her mother never ceased to remind her, but the realization of the inevitability of failure should she pursue a career as finicky as writing rapidly dawned on her, and so Mal wants to pursue culinary. 

Mal  _ needs _ to pursue culinary. 

* * *

Evie’s pipe dream is politics. She wants to start local and work her way to the very top. 

**_I want to be able to make changes, real changes, and I want to be able to create a voice for the people that lack one. It sounds cheesy, but I want the world to be better, and if I ever told my mom that I don’t want to dance, she’d end me. It just stopped being fun for me when I got ripped from ballet to do ballroom._ **

It’s a benevolent passion in a vicious world, but Evie is a benevolent soul in a vicious world, so it’s not illogical.

_ so when are you looking to move into the white house? _

**_I mean, the president doesn’t hold the maximum political power I’m going to need, but I’d say #Grimhilde2038 is a safe bet._ **

_ you’ve got my vote _

**_What are you talking about? You’re gonna be my trophy wife._ **

* * *

They invent a life together. It’s imaginary, but it’s kind and secure and lovely. 

They run off to Paris. 

It’s not exactly where Mal would prefer, but Evie thinks it’d be the perfect place to start again, and Mal thinks any place is perfect as long as they’re together, so they run off to Paris.

A tiny loft in a run down building would be their home, barely enough space for them to walk. No lights, only candles scatter the floor around them, and they’re lying in their bed, stealing glimpses of each other because they’re finally  _ free _ . There are no mothers here, no expectations around them. Evie dances because she loves it, only because she loves it, and Mal writes sonnet after sonnet about the dazzling girl with stars in her eyes and mirth on her lips. 

It’s a bedtime story, a silly narrative before they rest, and it is told every night without fail. 

Mal questions if her pipe dream is publishing a book anymore. 

* * *

The first time she and Evie come face to face is a disaster. 

Carlos invites her and Jay to watch his first dance rehearsal back after his injury, and Mal agrees a little too enthusiastically for someone that blew off the idea last time it was mentioned.

It’s not on purpose, it’s just that her and Evie have entirely different schedules and hanging out after school isn’t an option, so aside from the selfie she received as a contact picture-

read: the selfie she stared at standing on her sidewalk for ten minutes and then spent the next thirty trying to take the perfect one herself to send back, ultimately copping out and taking one with her little neighbor that was playing outside

-her and Evie had no actual visual contact, and that was fine. Their game thrived in words, not expressions. 

Carlos and Jay didn’t even know that it was Evie’s locker she was standing at that day or that she texted anyone aside from them. It always happened late when she was secluded and they were in their own beds, so it wasn’t like she was actively hiding this. It just never came up. 

Jay agrees to go because he’s incapable of denying anything Carlos asks, and so they rendezvous at Mal’s creepy ass locker on a Thursday afternoon, and he leads them to the wing of the school with a small studio built in. 

* * *

It’s not a secret that Evie is attractive. After extensive time scouring the internet for any trace of her features on social media and an embarrassing drool session that day on her sidewalk, Mal is well aware that Evie is attractive. Everyone is aware that Evie is attractive. It’s common knowledge. Facts. Law. 

Which definitely means that when Mal trips over nothing and lands flat on her face as soon as Evie as much as  _ smiles  _ in her direction for the first time, it’s not in shock because she  _ knows  _ Evie is attractive. 

(Mal also knows the taste of copper gushing from her bottom lip because she bit it during said endeavour and the faint ache of the wind being knocked from her chest from the loud  _ slam!  _ that echoed against the walls.)

As soon as there’s a flow of blood dripping to the ground, Carlos yelps and starts on his mission to find the nurse, Jay is bursting into the halls to get paper towels from the boys’ room, and there stands Evie, stupidly attractive Evie, helping Mal sit up and trying to hold back her snicker. 

“What about this is funny to you?” It doesn’t feel like it’s the first words they’ve ever verbally exchanged, but she supposes they’re in a special circumstance. 

Evie’s lips pull into a smug smirk, and if she wasn’t already on the ground, Mal is sure that an instant replay would be in the works. 

“Falling for me already?” 

* * *

Following the whole ‘Evie smiled at me and I lost my ability to walk’ fiasco, Mal amazingly gets to miss school the next day. She has two stitches in her frown and a mild concussion that needs to be monitored for a full 24 hours, and the boys expect as much, collecting her work and delivering it at the end of the day without even being asked. 

She’s not even big on missing school, usually preferring it to being at home, but she hasn’t been able to touch her phone because of her head, and facing Evie seems a tad more mortifying than the bathroom she’ll have to clean once she’s recovered. 

“Hey, your mom said we could give you back this and she’s running to get take out for dinner,” Jay greets, tossing her phone in her direction. “Who’s E? You have like eight texts from him.” 

_ Him _ , she hears. Obviously, it’d be a him. Who else would Mal speak to?

“Just a guy from my history class,” she shrugs. “We have a project and he’s probably just pissed I didn’t send him my portion last night.” 

He accepts the explanation and without second thought, plopping down on the bed with a bounce. Carlos follows, a little more carefully, but still invading all of Mal’s space as they always have. 

“You better not be replacing us.” Carlos points his finger accusingly. “You promised we’d be best friends  _ forever _ , Mally.” 

She cringes at the nickname. 

(There’s no dramatic backstory as to why, she just hates it.) 

“We were six years old, Car-“

“Are you saying pinky promises aren’t sacred?” Jay cuts in, shoving her over to lay flat beside her. “Not cool, Mally.” 

* * *

**_Hey, are you okay?_ **

**_I didn’t know that your mom would just grab you from the nurse’s office, otherwise I would’ve said goodbye._ **

**_Carlos said the bleeding hadn’t stopped when you left._ **

**_Just checking in for an update._ **

**_Carlos told me you got stitches and head trauma, so I guess it makes sense that you’re not replying. I hope you feel better in the morning._ **

**_Morning, M! Where’s your locker? I wanted to stop and say hi before class so I can see how gross your stitches look._ **

**_The rest of you is still cute so it’s okay, but they just sound gnarly._ **

**_Jay let me know you weren’t at school today, so I guess I’ll wait for a pic._ **

**_I’m sorry I made fun of you. I hope you’re alright._ **

* * *

_ you are such an asshole _

_ [[image attached]] _

_ don’t say i never gave you anything  _

* * *

“Okay, that pout is  _ ridiculous _ !” is the first thing that Evie says to her when they see each other again. Mal agrees to give Evie a map to her locker if she can keep the boys from finding out, and she eagerly accepts the offer, but only on Mondays and only after school when everyone is mostly gone for the day and Mal is taking her time packing up before walking home. 

“More making fun of how I look like an ugly little rag doll. Thanks,” Mal grumbles with an eye roll. 

Evie’s eyes go wide, and have they always been that dazzling? In the picture you can’t see each individual eyelash, and in the studio Mal was preoccupied almost dying to notice, but are they always so...sparkly? 

“I am not! You are the cutest thing I have ever seen in my whole entire life.” Evie speaks it as if it’s obvious, as if that’s what everyone is aware of regarding Mal. Like it’s certain, a fact. It’s set in stone. “Actually, I take it back. You blushing is the cutest thing I have ever seen in my whole entire life.” 

“I, um… thanks,” Mal musters up the courage to say in a small voice.

She makes a note  _ not  _ to obsess over this tonight while she’s in bed. 

* * *

As one would assume, she obsesses over being called cute while she’s in bed. 

_ Evie _ thinks  _ she’s _ cute. 

The boys would never let her live it down if they saw her. She’s constantly fighting to be seen as someone as strong as them, and this would set her back milestones. She’s the snarky one of their trio. Jay is the flirt, Carlos is the underdog, and Mal? She’s the ringleader. It’s not that she’s got this reputation as this horrifying villain or anything, but her name held an ounce of status to the general public as the head of the misfits, and ringleaders are  **_not_ ** cute. 

She’s the opposite of that.

She’s mean. 

She’s evil. 

She’s _ bad news.  _

**_Hey cutie, what’re you up to?_ **

Or she’s  _ ‘cutie’ _ because if Evie wants to call her that then who is she to deny her? 

**_Waiting for Frankenstein to bring you to life?_ **

_ i s2g if you don’t stop making fun of my stitches i am blocking you  _

* * *

Her stitches come out ten days later, and Evie makes a whole show out of the emojis on her phone of her crying because of it.

The doctor emoji, the scissor emoji, the lip emoji, the broken heart emoji, etcetera, etcetera, and Mal threatens to block her six times before it stops. 

**_I only sent the zombie emoji in solidarity because there is no Frankenstein’s monster emoji, and the support team at Apple hasn’t returned any of my emails yet._ **

_ i _

_ and i cannot emphasize this enough  _

_ hate you  _

* * *

Mal’s favorite story is The Little Prince- and _ no, _ the irony is most certainly  _ not _ lost on her that she would select that fucking book out of all others as her all time top choice when Evie asks because this crush is not only getting extremely embarrassing but would also be blatantly obvious if they interacted during daylight hours. 

**_I’ve never read that! What’s it about?_ **

And Mal could go on for hours, her eyes twinkling about the little prince’s passion for the flower,  _ his  _ flower, and the man in his airplane and the fox he tames and the planets explored and the complications of adulthood but she’s  **stupid** and it’s nearing 2 am so she just replies: 

_ can you ft? i can read some to you? i have a copy _

Because  _ that  _ somehow makes more sense than just lending it to her, but it’s Friday and Evie’s mom isn’t even home this weekend meaning she can sleep in for once, so Mal’s phone is ringing before she has a chance to take it back. 

“Hey,” she answers almost breathlessly, taking in the sight of the other girl with her dark hair tied back, face clear of any makeup. 

“Hi,” Evie grins back, and if Mal didn’t know any better, she would say Evie’s shoulders relax at the sound of her greeting. “Excuse me looking half dead, I wasn’t expecting to do this.” 

“Shut up, you’re gorgeous,” Mal replies without any hesitation. She lets her phone fall back for a second, the camera focusing on her ceiling so that she can just blink away the mortification at her own actions because… yeah,  _ that  _ just happened. 

Evie’s cheeks are still slightly pink when she focuses her attention back. “Thanks. Your lip looks a lot better.” She hadn’t physically seen her since before the stitches were taken out. She got pictures and assured her all week, but she knows Mal is still a bit insecure about it. “The  _ cutest _ little rag doll.” 

* * *

That’s how the tradition of Mal reading to Evie begins; a facetime call on a night that Evie’s mom won’t return with Mal’s favorite book in her grasp, phones propped up with pillows. 

“Read me your favorite part?” Evie requests, eyes heavy after they’d gotten distracted with conversation about their week at home and school, little details missed in texts shared between flirty banter. She yawns and pulls her blanket up, wiggling under it contently. 

Mal hums in agreement, flipping the worn pages and stopping just in time. 

It’s chapter seven. When her father would read it, he would do voices, but she doesn’t now, only says the words with a soft passion and fleeting glances at Evie struggling to keep her eyes open. 

It’s a fight that she’s portraying, one between the man and the little prince. They’re discussing thorns and the uses of them, but the man is focused on fixing his plane. He argues with the little prince for not taking his crash more seriously _.  _ He tells him that what the little prince is talking about- a sheep eating a flower with thorns- isn’t important. Well, not like now fixing his broken airplane is, at least. He has  _ matters of consequence  _ he is busy with.

Then, the little prince tells the man that he talks like grown ups, and Mal had always made a big frown at that one. 

(“Mommy is a grown up...” she would tell her father with tears in her eyes after story time. “Oh, Daddy! Mommy is a grown up! All she cares about is numbers. What will we do?” 

He would simply wipe her wet cheeks and smile, “Mal, she has us, to write stories for her and to read them aloud. With us around, she’ll never be able to rely on numbers too much.”)

(She doesn’t rely on numbers anymore, but on worse, and Mal hates herself for not being stronger, for not writing and reading aloud more.)

(If only she wrote and read aloud more.) 

The little prince goes on about the planet with a red-faced gentleman, and Mal realizes she’s hardly even looking at the book at this point, mostly going off her own memory. She knows these lines because she’s been reading them all her life. She would have her father read this chapter over and over before willingly going to sleep, let alone the times she skipped the rest of the story for this segment alone after he had passed. 

_ “I am busy with matters of consequence!”  _ she declares as the mushroom, and she guesses she  _ is _ going to do a funny voice for at least a fraction of this, but Evie chuckles and her nose crinkles in the slightest so it’s worth any embarrassment that she buries deep down. 

Soon, the passage she has been waiting for has arrived, and the corners of her lips are ever so slightly curved as she recites the words, “ _ ‘And if I know—I, myself—one flower which is unique in the world, which grows nowhere but on my planet, but which one little sheep can destroy in a single bite some morning, without even noticing what he is doing- you think that is not important?’ His face turned from red to white as he continued-”  _ Her fingers lazily trace the center of the pages where they bind, a dreamy gleam in her eyes. _ ‘‘‘If someone loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. He can say to himself, 'Somewhere, my flower is there…' But if the sheep eats the flower, in one moment all his stars will be darkened…. And you think that is not important?’” _

Mal pauses, catching Evie staring at her in what suspiciously seems like awe. “He loves the flower, and the man doesn’t understand that when he’s asking about the thorns,” she speaks finally, almost like she’s clarifying to herself. 

A nod is given. “The little prince thinks in absolutes. The man has grown up a little. He’s been forced to, and that shows in his patience being so thin. He cries next- the little prince does.” 

A yawn is interrupted by a gasp- or a gasp by a yawn, Mal isn’t sure which Evie was doing first. “He  _ cries _ ?” 

“He sobs. For his love, his flower. He didn’t know how to love her and he left,” Mal explains, her voice growing small. “He runs and regrets it. Later on, he learns that she is a rose, just an ordinary rose, but that she isn’t because he has tamed her and cared for her.” A bittersweet tug at her lips is just peeking out beneath her synopsis. “It is the time he had wasted for his rose that made her so important.”

Evie’s eyes flutter shut then, or just before, Mal doesn’t know, and she’s cuddling into her pillow and clutching her comforter around her, the soft glow of the fairy lights draped across her bed frame keeping her visible. “Mal?” she whispers out. 

“Yes, E?” Mal answers just as quietly. 

“Will you do something for me? Promise it to me?” 

A million thoughts cross her mind, all along the lines of  _ I would do anything for you. _

“Of course.” 

“Never stop writing and read to me forever and ever,” she tells her, as if it’s the easiest thing to accomplish. “Let’s never become grown ups. Let’s always waste our time on one another.” 

Mal has never considered herself as lucky as she does in that moment in which Evie is blinded by tiredness, oblivious to the pure adoration written across her features as she beams at her phone screen. 

“Whatever you wish, my rose.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sooo i definitely need someone to help me write harry's accent for this next chapter so if anyone would like to do that pls dm me on twitter @momager6000 or message me or tumblr @missy-bradford that would be absolutely lovely thank youuu pls leave kudos nd comments if u read nd enjoy  
> the fake dating nd more with uma unfolds next chapter and im not sure ab a set update schedule but it's about halfway written and would also like a beta for what i do have so if ur interested just lmk!


	2. easy peasy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Uma shrinks back, from embarrassment or intimidation, Mal was going for both, her lips stretch into a sad smile. “She seems sweet. She’s really lucky to have you. How long have you been together?” 
> 
> So, logically, Mal does as one would do when backed into a corner by their ex at the party of their new mortal enemy. “I’m the lucky one. It’s only been a few weeks. It’s been on the low, this is our first night out with everyone together. We liked having our privacy, but she got so excited about the party that I just couldn’t say no.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no one dmed me so harry got written like everyone else bc i am not embarrassing myself trying to write that accent no thank you anywhomst we start to dive into uma and mal's backstory and the fake dating begins to unfold!!! (next chap it gets way juicier) as always feel free to hmu on twit @momager6000 or tumblr @missy-bradford and pls comment/leave kudos if u read and like it

For Evie’s birthday, she gets her very own car, which is kind of the biggest deal because now she can drive wherever she wants without asking. 

Well, except she can’t because she did receive a car, but her mother dictates when she leaves and demands to know where because she is only seventeen years old. 

Which is fair. 

All Mal can really focus on is that Evie now likes to talk in  _ us  _ and  _ we _ statements. 

It’s not that  _ she _ is going to travel the country. She’s asking Mal where  _ they _ are going on  _ their _ road trip because  **_I can drive now everywhere without my mom’s GPS tracking it, M!!! The world is our oyster and all that good stuff!!!_ **

And, fuck, if Mal can’t help but think that it is. 

* * *

When Uma first started calling her M, she didn’t like it. She thought it was a dumb nickname. 

(Truth be told, she just hadn’t ever really had one that stuck as well as Mal did, even after she expressed growing  _ very  _ sick and tired of it, so she embraced it.) 

She just liked Uma so much that she let her keep using it. Day and night, one conversation after another, it would be  _ M, look at this! _ or  _ I missed you today, M _ . 

Mal used to call her Shrimpy. She would throw a pillow at her head and kiss her until she was dizzy because “ _ I absolutely adore you and you repay me with slander? I’d say unbelievable, M, but it is tragically not. _ ”

Mal wonders if Uma calls Harry by his first initial. 

(She doesn’t. She calls him  _ Hook _ and  _ baby _ and her _ forever first mate _ . She’s seen the instagram captions, heard the greetings in videos on stories. She loves him uniquely, and maybe that’s why this still hurts. Uma loves in wholes, and Mal is still learning to do that.) 

Evie using the nickname never feels wrong, though, and so Mal maybe thinks that Uma was just the placeholder. This becomes abundantly clear the first time she hears it in person. 

It’s a Monday after school, one of  _ their  _ Mondays, as Evie so eagerly calls them now, and with a glimpse of blue, she rushes up and throws her arms around the smaller girl. 

“I missed you  _ so much _ today!” Evie huffs dramatically, her arms crossed over her chest as soon as they’re at her own side again. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to go the whole winter break without seeing you once.” 

Mal can’t hold back her grin, admiring the pout on Evie’s lips. “You’ll see me at your ballroom regionals, remember? I promised Carlos that I’d go at the beginning of the school year so I’m grandfathered in.” 

Slowly, Evie’s hands ease forward, lacing their fingers together in the empty hallway. “That’s not the same,” she sighs. “We barely interact with each other in front of the boys, and my mother will be there, so I’ll have to be even more distant than I already hate being…” She squeezes Mal’s palms once, twice, three times, and with sad, heavy eyes, she blinks away a few tears. “I wish the world was just you and me, M.” 

And, just like that, Mal  _ knows  _ that no one else was ever meant to call her this,  _ not even Uma _ . 

“One day, it will be, E. I promise.” 

* * *

Mal has to miss the dance competition. It’s for a good reason- 

Well, not a  _ good _ reason, but a valid reason, and Carlos makes sure to emphasize a million times that he understands, but Mal still curls up clinging to a bottle of whiskey and Jay has to come sit with her while she doesn’t drink it. 

Her mom goes on a binge, which isn’t unusual, except this binge she tears into Mal’s father’s locked office to which Mal holds the key to meaning she tears into Mal’s bedroom and destroys a large portion of Mal’s most valuable things- including her copy of  _ The Little Prince _ that her father gave to her and had been reading to her since she was born. 

During said binge, all revealed after Mal was done showering in preparation to be in the audience for her friends’ dance competition, her mother began to rip into her verbally about what a disappointment she is. 

_ “Those  _ **_journals_ ** _ , Mallory? What have we said about those  _ **_journals_ ** _?”  _ and  _ “You and your father wanted to lose everything on stupid little pipe dreams! Do you think of me as a monster? Don’t you love me? Don’t you understand I just want a future for you?” _ which turned into a sobbing Mal’s pleas of, “ _ Of course, I don’t think that, Mother. Please, let’s just get into bed now?”  _ and “ _ I could never see you as a monster, Mother. I love you so much! Please, why don’t you just hand me the bottle?”  _ because she  _ couldn’t  _ ever see her mother that way, she  **_wouldn’t_ ** ever see her mother that way, and if she’d just hand her the bottle-

It shatters on the ground, nearly empty so barely anything spills, but Mal’s eyes widen in horror as the shards of glass scatter across torn up pages she recognizes instantly. 

“My… my book…” 

“That _ stupid little book _ …” her mother spits out, gripping a picture frame on Mal’s bedside table. It’s from a picnic at the park, ironically it’s one she had taken of her husband and daughter laughing cheerfully. “You were both always off reading your stupid little book!” she shrieks, slamming the photo to the ground, joining the rest of Mal’s scattered memories. “Always off in your ridiculous dreamland!  _ A little prince!  _ There are no little princes, Mallory! No talking foxes! No special roses! There will be no more bedtime stories under this roof, and that’s not a request.” She steps forward, over the remains, the love she destroyed like it was nothing. “Clean up this  _ trash. _ ” When she’s face to face with Mal herself, her fingertips brush her cheek and tuck purple hair behind her ear. “Why don’t we go out for dinner tomorrow now that you’re out of school? Get some Chinese from around the corner. Your favorite.” 

Mal knows that her mother loves her. She knows that she loves her father, too, and she knows that she can’t cope. It’s not a great excuse, but she’s her mom, so Mal tugs her covers over her drained body when she checks on her after cleaning her broken heart from her bedroom floor, and when Jay shows up and pulls the alcohol from her grip, she leaves out some of the details of their altercation so that her mom doesn’t seem as bad because she’s  _ not _ . 

When she’s present,  _ fully  _ sober, she’s really not, and Mal really doesn’t want her friends to hate her mother when she comes back home to her. 

( _ If _ she comes back home to her.) 

* * *

Evie shows up at her house with Carlos about an hour after Jay arrives, long after her mother has turned in for the night and her tears are dried on her cheeks. With first place ribbons pinned to their matching tracksuits, they stand in Mal’s den after a long night of anxious texts exchanged between Jay and Carlos about what had occurred for the third of their group to stay in. 

Evie is only there because she is Carlos’s ride, which she insists on because she can’t admit that Mal is her secret best friend and hasn’t answered like any of her texts leaving her scared shitless because Carlos isn’t going to give away Mal’s personal business so… yeah. 

Thankfully, her mother was more than thrilled for Evie to be spending more time with a boy and questioned nothing. 

There’s an overwhelming sense of relief she feels when Mal is in her sight, but it’s cut short when she takes note of the puffiness around her eyes. She watches the struggle Mal faces quirking her lips to smile when Carlos launches himself to hug her. 

“We’re not staying long,” he explains, holding her close. “I know how you like your space. I just wanted to check on you.” 

Mal nods gratefully. She hasn’t looked in Evie’s direction yet. This...well, it isn’t exactly how she imagined she’d bring Evie home- not that she imagines bringing her home a lot. She just very easily could picture herself not fresh off of a mental breakdown with her still drunk mother passed out forty feet away in the next room over, and here she is! In this situation! With both of those things! 

“I’m okay.” It really is bold of her to lie right through her teeth like that, especially after Jay found her mid  _ am-I-turning-into-my-mom-by-wanting-to-drink-right-now? _ meltdown before it morphed into a  _ no-I-understand- _ **_but_ ** _ -alcoholism-is-a-hereditary-disease-and-could-I-have-it-despite-not-drinking? _ crisis. 

(They decided on no, right at this moment, Mal is not her mother nor an alcoholic, and Jay promised not to ever let her get to that point.) 

The boys share a nod before Jay checks the time on his phone, “Shit! My dad is gonna freak if I miss curfew. Are you good?” Mal gives him a quick hug and whispers a heavy thank you into his ear, for his love, his friendship, for everything since the day that they met, and he squeezes her so tight that she thinks she might pop. “I love you. Text me if I gotta sneak out, okay? ‘Los, you coming?” 

Carlos glances awkwardly between him and Evie, not sure who to choose. “I came here with Evie, I wouldn’t want to-“ 

“Dude, we live four doors apart. Don’t you live on the other side of town?” Jay asks, turning the attention to the blue haired girl for the first time since they’d arrived. 

“It’s honestly fine, Carlos,” Evie answers easily, throwing him a reassuring smile. She turns to Mal. “Would it be alright if I just used your restroom really fast?” 

Green eyes not meeting Evie’s brown, Mal tells her where it is, pointing to a door and moving forward to exchange goodbyes with Carlos and ushering her friends out. 

When Evie returns, it takes less than a minute for her to register that the boys are gone and she can now freely hug Mal, unrestricted. “I was so worried about you,” she confesses. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it,” Mal mumbles against the skin of her neck, hands clinging tight into the fabric around Evie’s waist. “My mom had a bad night. I might’ve had an even worse one. At least she’ll sleep through it.” 

Evie leans back slightly, just enough for Mal to follow, forcing her to  _ finally  _ lock their eyes. “There you are,” she speaks softly. “I would say I was beginning to forget what they looked like, but I don’t think there’s any force in this universe that could make me forget those eyes.” 

Mal can barely breathe. She’s standing so close, and Evie is looking at her like she hung the fucking moon, so she says what she can to break the tension. “That hideous, huh?” 

But Evie is quick on her toes, and she shakes her head with the dopiest of grins. “Not even close.” 

* * *

They’re on Mal’s bed, twenty minutes later, when Evie tests her luck. 

“What happened tonight, Mal?” 

She doesn’t love to push, and she knows that she hasn’t been friends with Mal as long as Jay and Carlos, but her dresser is almost bare, and Mal keeps looking uneasily at her trash bin, and worst case scenario? Mal says mind your own business, so she risks it. 

“My mom isn’t a bad person.” Mal just needs to make that clear, above all else. “She isn’t this mistress of all evil. She loves me, and she loves my dad.” 

Evie shakes her head up and down, her hand inching forward to cover Mal’s pale one. She knows about questionable mothers, knows about them still loving you when they do things that others can’t see their twisted motivation behind. 

“She hurts when she gets reminded of him.” Mal leans over to her bedside table, one hand still connected to Evie, and opens the drawer. She pulls out the picture that her mother had thrown to the ground earlier in her fit of rage. “She broke the frame this was in tonight. She broke anything she could see that reminded her that he existed… Sometimes…” Her lungs constrict, air shaky and uneven when she lets out her following words. “Sometimes I think I see glimpses of her, of who she was before he was gone. She’ll make us dinner or she’ll be singing a song in the car, something so  _ little  _ that she just  _ doesn’t do  _ anymore. I’ll get so convinced that this is going to be it, this is when she’ll come back, but she spirals twice as hard, and it’s not her fault, you know? It’s not.” 

She’s hurt. Mal just wants to scream from a rooftop for somebody to save her mother because she’s  _ hurting  _ and she’s  _ drowning  _ and  _ please _ , if just someone could  _ help them _ , just  _ save them _ . 

“She just gets reminded of him sometimes, and she can’t handle it, and that’s not her fault. She’s not a bad person. She loves me, and she loves him.” 

“I know that she does, M,” Evie tells her, promises her, holding tight to her hand so that she can see she’s being honest. “You don’t have to keep telling me. I believe you.” 

“She drinks too much.” A true statement. Mal can’t deny that. “I know that she does, but she’s not a bad person. She drank too much, and she was hurting. She acted out of pain. She broke my pictures. She destroyed my books. She threw my journals. She took the key I hid to his office and she…” 

_ She tore apart his memories.  _

“She was hurt, E.” 

Evie brushes away tears that Mal doesn’t feel start to fall with the pad of her free thumb. 

“She was only hurting, E. She’s not a bad person.” 

“I know, M,” Evie whispers into her ear, pulling her to her chest as she breaks into full blown sobs. “I’ve got you.”

* * *

On Christmas Eve, Mal and her mother order thai takeout and watch the Peanuts special before the matriarch excuses herself to go to her work party that is held every year. Being the CEO, Mal is used to being alone come 6pm, even though she’s reminded that she  _ is  _ invited to tag along, but watching her mom get wasted is  _ especially _ uncomfortable when it isn’t within their own walls, so she gives a line about not wanting to hang with a bunch of  _ old people _ and accepts the ruffling of her hair and playful scold thrown in her direction. 

She wishes it could always feel like that. 

Right when she typically gets her, “Bye, kiddo! Love ya! Don’t forget to lock the door!” she is met with a confused, “Uh, Mallory, honey? There’s a package for you?” 

Sure enough, wrapped in blue glitter paper, is a small rectangular gift on her front step. On the top sits a sticker with only the letter ‘M’ written in beautiful calligraphy. 

Mal jumps up, snatching the present and bidding her mother farewell. “It must be a secret santa from one of the boys. I told them to wait until school, but you know how dense they are. Bye, love you! I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“I’m supposed to believe Jay or Carlos did  _ that _ ?” her mother laughs, leading up to a snort. “Yeah, right! But sure, kid, for the time crunch, let’s touch base on this tomorrow. I love ya.” She smacks a loud peck to the center of Mal’s forehead. 

As soon as she is alone, Mal whips out her phone. 

_ we agreed no gifts _

Does she have a perfectly wrapped  _ #Grimhilde2038 _ button under her bed that she specially ordered and a box of them hidden in her closet because you have to buy them in bulk? That’s not the point. 

**_You agreed no gifts. I said that sounded like a very Scroogey thing to say around Christmas._ **

**_Don’t open it yet._ **

Within seconds, there’s a knock at her front door. 

“E?” Mal asks incredulously. 

“I may or may not have been hiding out, waiting for your mom to leave for her work party so that you could open your present in person...” Evie blurts out in one huff, her eyes closed in embarrassment. She peeks with one lid, a smile spreading across her lips as she pulls Mal in for an embrace. “Merry Christmas! I really can’t be here because as soon as my mother notices that I’m not socializing at our huge gathering right now, it’s game over, but I couldn’t help it. I was dropping it off, and I just had to stay.” 

Mal helps her inside from the cold, tugging her into her bedroom and pulling them both onto her mattress where she can easily place her gift for Evie onto her lap. 

“Well, what do we have here, little miss we-agreed-no-gifts?” 

Mal rolls her eyes. “That is so  _ not  _ the point right now.” 

Evie carefully unties the ribbon securing the lid and plucks it off, her bottom lip held between her teeth as she analyzes the metal shining back at her. “ _ M… _ ” 

Mal swears there’s honey in her voice, almost as much as is in her eyes- speaking of, is she crying? It’s supposed to be a nice gift, a sweet one to honor Evie’s dreams. Why is she sniffling? “I can get you something else!” Mal quickly yelps out, going to grab for the pin, but she’s stopped when Evie clutches it to her chest. 

“No! I love it!” She takes it out, buttoning it right to the front of her cobalt peacoat that she had kept on, a subtle reminder that she would have to be going soon. “It actually makes me feel a lot less stupid for my gift.” 

Mal begins to unfold her package now, not normally ripping and shredding the paper like she does Christmas morning with Evie staring so intently at her. The tips of her fingers just about go numb when she realizes what she ends up holding. 

In her grip is a crisp copy of  _ The Little Prince _ , the same edition she had owned from her father without the dents and yellowed pages. 

“I know it’s not the same as the one you’d had since you were born, but-“

“It’s perfect,” Mal finishes for her, eyes bright and glittering with pure astonishment. There’s just one thing she can’t figure out. “Why would you feel stupid about this?” 

For the first time in knowing each other, Mal sees Evie’s cheeks burn a deep red. Brown orbs don’t dare peek up through thick lashes as she reaches over and flips the cover open, exposing a handwritten inscription. 

“ _ For my darling trophy wife,”  _ Mal reads aloud, absolutely beaming. “ _ Just a little something to read to the kids when your own stories don’t cut it. xx E.”  _ Brows bunched together, Mal continues to question, “I still don’t know why you would think this is stupid, E. I love it.” 

Evie stares at her with this barely there simper. “You’re my best friend, Mal. I know that you have Carlos and Jay, but you’re my only best friend.” She interlocks their fingers, a usual habit nowadays when they’re within reach and alone. “I’ve never really given a Christmas gift that has meant a lot like this before, so I was afraid of looking silly.” 

“You do that all on your own,” Mal counters, smirking cheekily when Evie scoffs and flicks her with her open hand. 

“You are such an ass!” Evie grumbles, grinning despite her bitter words. “I’m sitting here trying to work up the courage to tell you how much your best friendship means to me and that I love y-“

Her phone blasting jingle bells interrupts her ramble, her face draining of all color as she realizes what that must mean. She scrambles to her feet, ripping her hand from Mal’s and answering immediately. “Hola, Mami!” 

Mal can’t hear anything from the other line, but notes Evie’s grimace.

“I am on my way back right now. I had to exchange presents with some of my friends from dance, recuerdas?” At this point, Evie has her button removed from the her jacket and tucked securely into her pocket, standing in front of Mal’s dresser mirror and adjusting her hair so that it is perfect enough to return home with. “Si, Mami, the boys in class  _ were _ there, which is why I couldn’t be rude and miss it! I didn’t want to interrupt your conversation with the mayor, so I just snuck away for a few moments.” She rummages through her purse next, one Mal didn’t even notice hanging low from her shoulder, puckering on lipstick while holding her phone up with her neck. “Okay. Si...  _ Si _ …  _ Si, Mami _ .” 

Once she hangs up, she has to rush her goodbye to Mal- Mal, who is still in a daze from a very pretty, very much the girl who she has a big, fat crush on saying almost all of ‘I love you’ just two minutes before- but not before she tries to fucking kill her. 

She’s doing one more final touch up, fixing her lip  _ liner _ because that’s not the same thing as lip _ stick- _ Mal asked the difference during one of their Mondays, she got an entire chemistry and beauty lesson wrapped into one- when Evie’s eyes widen in absolute panic. “Oh, shoot! I need to blot.” 

On her life, Mal thinks she says _plot_ , which is quite an odd choice of words considering that Evie doesn’t plot and has rolled her eyes at Mal’s plotting tendencies upwards of three times, but in the spirit of the holidays, she is prepared to let Evie do anything she pleases because, as previously pointed out, she mostly, entirely said that she _loves_ _her_ , so if she wants to plot, then so be it!

But she isn’t plotting, she’s pressing ruby red lips to Mal’s dimple, then to her cheekbone, then the tip of her nose, then dangerously close to where she would taste the remnants of the dumplings Mal devoured with her mother earlier in the night. 

“You look like a rosy little elf!” Evie giggles, a giddy, wholesome Evie giggle that leaves Mal even more breathless than she already was. 

Mal escorts her to the front door, skin blushing a deep crimson on its own in addition to the patches of Evie’s makeup stamped along. 

“I’ll call you tonight, okay?” Evie is outside, nearly shouting from the curb where her car is parked. 

Mal laughs as she stumbles through a bank of snow, too preoccupied trying to talk rather than watch what she’s doing. “I’ll be waiting.”

* * *

Curled into her blankets, phone propped up against an extra pillow so that she can effortlessly watch Evie struggle to stay awake talking to her in a mirrored position, Mal tells her that she loves her. 

“E? Remember what we were talking about before your mom called today?” she asks, her eyes focused on the way Evie’s brows fight to meet as she thinks. There are a million more than best friend feelings pounding in her chest right now, but louder than them all, she knows that this is her person. In every way, shape, and form, Evie is supposed to be by her side, and she loves her enough for every possibility that holds. 

“Not really,” she mutters through the phone, obviously racking her brain. “My mother makes me so scatterbrained sometimes. I’m sorry-“ 

“No!” Mal interrupts, hopefully stopping Evie’s turmoil around not remembering what must’ve been important enough for Mal to bring up. “It really wasn’t a big deal. You were just saying something about how I’m your best friend and you love me, but you kept pointing out that it was okay that you weren’t mine because of Carlos and Jay and…that’s not true.” Mal’s heart breaks at how genuinely confused the other girl seems. “Evie, you’re my best friend, too. Of course, I have Jay and Carlos, and they’re like my brothers, but… you’re my girl. It’s you and me now.” 

Just barely, Evie breaks into a smile, and Mal might just push the boys off a cliff if it meant seeing that again. “It’s you and me forever,” she bashfully corrects, still trying to process the news that this best friendship isn’t as one sided as she previously thought. 

“Forever,” Mal repeats for good measure, a content hum buzzing from her throat as she cuddles into her blankets, letting her eyes fall shut. 

“Merry Christmas, M,” she hears in a whisper, a sleepy one that she doesn’t have to open her eyes to see is delivered by a bundled up teenager. 

“Merry Christmas, E.” It’s just as soft, just as sweet, and she’s nearly asleep when she remembers the most important part of this entire night. “Hey, E?” 

“Hmmph?” she gets grumbled back at her, and Mal has never been so sure of something in her life

“I love you, too.” 

* * *

She and Uma had said they loved each other only three times because those words were sacred, Uma told her they were sacred and that she couldn’t go throwing them around left and right. 

The first was Mal’s fault, their lips swollen from kissing and knees bruised from climbing around the treehouse in Uma’s backyard. The starlight crept in from the cutout for a window, and with wonderstruck awe, Mal whispered that she loved her. 

_ “M,”  _ Uma grinned, her teeth looking like a shark’s smirk would in Mal’s memory now, “ _ you know that I love you, too, but those aren’t words you just say. My mother would destroy us. She’d never let me see you again.”  _

Mal sighs. Uma resembles nothing of a shark. She looks nothing like a predator. The crescent of the moon that night, up in the branches, forms the broken smile Uma gave when they created a signal- their pointer and middle fingers dancing along their palm, a tribute to Ursula walking the plank so that they could happily and openly be together- that motion  _ meant _ those three sacred words so that they wouldn’t have to say them, and every time something happened in Uma’s mother’s presence, just out of sight, the two girls would do their call instead of holding each other close because that had to be enough. That  _ was _ enough.

The second time was Mal’s fault, too. Uma almost died, though, and couldn’t do their signal, so it wasn’t entirely uncalled for. 

How her girlfriend survived a fall from a third story window with only a broken wrist? Don’t ask her, but she rushed into the hospital room and threw the first thing she could see onto the bed. 

(Luckily for Uma, a pillow.) 

“ _ Fuck, M, are you kidding me? I literally just fell out of a building _ !” 

But Mal was  _ fuming _ , and her eyes almost felt like they were glowing, and she was going to fucking kill Gil as soon as she got her hands on him because even the doctors were asking  _ how did she survive this?  _ and  _ her skull should’ve been at least fractured _ ! 

Then Uma was calling her over, the arm free of a cast stretched out to wrap around Mal’s waist as she dropped down on the hospital bed. “ _ It wasn’t Gil’s fault _ ,” she told her, knowing her girlfriend well enough to want to save her idiotic best friend. “ _ I tripped while we were playing catch with some eggs, and he was on the other side of the room. He tried to run, but he just wasn’t fast enough. He’s already beating himself up enough about it.”  _

Mal knew that Uma was right. Gil wouldn’t intentionally hurt anyone, much less his very best friend in the universe. She’d go and see him after that, take him out to lunch. She would make sure he knows this isn’t his fault, that Uma was just a clumsy idiot. 

“ _ You know it’s just because I love you, right?”  _ Mal tells her, pulling the sharpie tucked in her back pocket for emergency vandalism out so that she can be the first to sign her girlfriend’s plastered arm. 

“ _ And I love you, but that doesn’t mean you can use that as an excuse to beat up Gi- Mal! Stop drawing dicks! My mom is gonna see this!”  _

The third and final time was the only time that Uma said it first, and it was the night of their break up. They met in the treehouse, the stars and moon hitting Uma’s skin exactly how Mal loved, but, then again, Mal just loved  _ her _ , so she can’t keep blaming the twilight sky. 

Harry had recently moved to Uma’s neighborhood, and Ursula adored him. He was over all the time, always invited for dinner and barbecues. He had a busboy job at the diner Uma’s mother owned, and he went to the same private high school that Ursula transferred Uma to when she thought that she and Mal were getting too close after seeing their hands interlocked at Uma’s fifteenth birthday.

Looking back, Mal knows now that Ursula has gotten exactly her way. She grew insecure. Uma loved her, and instead of seeing that, she saw how well Uma’s life was doing without her directly in it. She saw the handsome boy from down the street that made her girlfriend laugh harder than she even seemed to do, and she ran. 

“ _ We should break up. _ ” 

Uma stopped talking, the story about Harry pranking their algebra teacher suddenly not interesting at all. “ _ What? Why would you say that?”  _

Mal’s gaze hardened, lips pressing tightly together before picking out exactly how to push away the only one she wanted close. “ _ You have your life, Uma, and I have mine. News flash, they don’t line up anymore.”  _

Uma stared blankly, failing to hold in the pout on her bottom lip. “ _ M...M, I love you. You’re always going to have a part in my life.” _

Mal’s bitter laugh filled the wooden walls. She shook her head, ignoring that Uma took the time from her day to meet her here, like she did every night because they don’t have school anymore to talk. She ignored the way Uma left notes in her mailbox when she walked by her house, waking up an hour early and taking the long way to work in order to do so, so that she knew she was thinking about her. She ignored the times she knew Ursula screamed until her throat was raw because her daughter wouldn’t be gay, she  _ couldn’t  _ be gay, and she wasn’t, but bisexuality was just as evil in her eyes, so for every secret meeting that even made Mal feel ashamed of who she was, Uma kissed her twice as tenderly, and Mal reminded her that they weren’t doing anything wrong. 

In that moment, Mal did her best to ignore, ignore,  _ ignore _ , and with the most wicked expression she could muster, a broken heart hanging by a thread in her chest, she headed for the ladder and the safety of her home. 

_ “Those aren’t just words you say, Shrimpy.” _

* * *

Since saying it in the hours between Christmas Eve and morning, she and Evie have exchanged those words twenty-seven times. 

( **_I’ll see you at the New Year’s Eve party tonight, okay? I love you!_ **

_ see ya there, e  _

_ love you too _ )

Twenty-eight. 

It’s like that saying with the floodgates if the flood was never ending because holy shit, Evie never stops saying it. 

Not that this is Mal complaining! It’s not, and she says it back every single time because she loves her so very much, and she makes sure that Evie knows, but holy shit. 

**_Don’t forget to bring chips! Okay, bye for real now! I love you!_ **

Twenty-nine. 

* * *

It needs to be simply stated that Mal previously had nothing against Ben before New Year’s Eve. 

Sure, she’d known of him. He’s the golden boy, the school’s prized tourney player. He’s the team captain or line leader or whatever the hell Evie calls him when she talks about dancing. 

Mal is Evie’s plus one tonight, but that’s only because Jay is Carlos’s  _ date _ , so if Evie had not stepped up like the good samaritan she is, Mal would be home by her lonesome this New Year’s Eve instead of dumping her own personal stash of doritos for the dance kids to steal, but Mal doesn’t even hate Ben for draining her of her snack supply. 

Yes, this  _ stupid party _ had all been Ben’s idea. He invited everyone to his castle of a home to bring in the new year  _ together _ and celebrate the collection of ribbons from their recent competition. She’d only seen him in passing until now,  _ maybe  _ pretended to accidentally trip him once or twice to just get some dirt on his fucking jeans, and she really was on the verge of even perhaps liking him before a flash of teal curls catch her eye and her heart sinks. 

The issue is, Uma sees her  _ first _ , and she can’t run because Uma is fearless, she’s all rage and bite, so color Mal shocked when she spots hesitation freckled in her greeting.

“Mal, uh, hey.” Fuck, she looks beautiful, and fuck, Mal wasn’t prepared to see her. She’s not the same girl she was when she stormed away from that treehouse, tears slipping down her cheeks, is she? She’s not the same girl that gave up on her first love without even trying, right?

“What are you doing here?” Except she is because her tone is hard, guarded, and that’s not fair to Uma. It’s not fair when she’s the one that ended things, the one that didn’t answer so often, and the one time she did, the one time she pushed through the pain ripping at her limbs as she accepted the call, she pushed Uma even farther. She pushed Uma right into Harry. 

Uma’s eyes cast down the same way they did when they were younger. Mal wonders if she still plays with her shell necklace, or if she even wears it. She could’ve grown out of it by now. The sweater she is wearing doesn’t reveal it. “Harry is a dancer. Ben and him grew up in the same studio. He spends every New Year here.” 

Really, Mal is proud of herself for holding back that Uma is just following him around like a lost puppy then, just like the girls they would make fun of before they made their own tradition. They used to sneak into Ursula’s diner. They’d make stacks of pancakes they wouldn’t finish with fruit cooked in and at midnight, and before, and after, and for as long as they could before pulling back to breathe, they would kiss and kiss and kiss, kisses sticky with syrup and the juice from berries. 

Neither of them pointed out that they  _ had  _ to make their own tradition because if word got back to Ursula that Uma was seen at a party, lips locked with Mal at midnight all hell would break loose. Then again, neither of them cared. 

“Yeah, I’m here with the guys and-“ 

Speak of her angel. 

“Hey, M, I got us some veggies. I know- oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’m Evie. You are?” Evie smiles politely, her hand jutting out to shake Uma’s and Mal really thinks this is her cue to curl up and die. 

But Uma doesn’t take it. All she gets out is a broken whisper of, “ _ M _ ?” and her eyes are dancing between Evie and Mal, bordering dangerously between hurt and something Mal can’t recognize. 

“Eves?” a voice booms over them all, blue eyes shining mischievously as a strong arm winds around Uma’s waist. “If it isn’t the one that got away...” 

“Harry!” Evie laughs, too knowing of his charming demeanor. She moves forward to greet him with a quick hug. “I leave you in the sandbox  _ one time _ .” 

“My first heartbreak,” Harry coos in his thick accent, wiping an imaginary tear with his curled finger.

Wow, Mal really thinks she’s going to be sick.

“Excuse me,” she manages to get out, and is the ceiling spinning? Or is it the ground? There’s a balcony around here somewhere, and she definitely just tripped trying to find it, but one of the gods must’ve felt some sort of pity because she stumbles out just in time to dry heave over the edge. 

“That was surely something.” 

She just can’t fucking catch a break, can she? 

“Following me now, are you, Shrimpy?” Mal musters, and fuck, she shouldn’t have looked up. 

The starlight gleaming down...The moon cut into the perfect crescent… It’s mocking her. 

“I wanted to check on you,” Uma confides, arms up in surrender. “Harry and  _ Eves  _ are playing catch-up. I wanted to make sure you were okay.” 

“I’m fine.” She’s not. Nowhere near it, actually, but she’ll be damned if her ex is the one to know first. 

“No, you’re not, but you don’t have to talk to me. I’m not…” Uma sighs, long and deep, and Mal can swear that their hearts are almost broken in the same places, even still. “I’m not that person for you anymore… _clearly_.” She mumbles the last word, not intending for Mal to catch it, but she does because Uma is horrible at mumbling. 

Mal used to tease her for it, mercilessly until she’d shut her up with kisses and nips on her shoulder and little tugs on her hair. 

“This is what the sky looked like the night you broke my heart.” It’s not an accusation. Uma states it as a fact, staring up at the twinkling lights above them almost wistfully, and Mal knows she said it without thinking. She does that sometimes when she’s nervous. 

She dares to look over, dares to ignore the tears collecting in chocolate brown eyes that her fingertips are itching to wipe away. Starlight hits her skin the same way it did when they first fell in love, and Mal feels truly helpless.

“She calls you ‘M’,” Uma continues, and it’s jealousy that Mal couldn't place earlier. She can see it now, and anger bubbles as she hears Uma’s voice only thirty-three days after their breakup, begging for Mal’s blessing to go with Harry to their school’s formal. The rational side of her is prepared to point out that she and Evie are  _ just friends, _ only friends in public as of tonight per  _ their _ interaction, but something stops her. “That was my thing.” 

“You don’t have a monopoly on nicknames.” The edge in her voice is starting to show, not particular to this game Uma is playing, whatever it may be. “It’s  _ hers _ now, and that’s the way it’s staying.”

When Uma shrinks back, from embarrassment or intimidation, Mal was going for both, her lips stretch into a sad smile. “She seems sweet. She’s really lucky to have you. How long have you been together?” 

So, logically, Mal does as one would do when backed into a corner by their ex at the party of their new mortal enemy. “I’m the lucky one. It’s only been a few weeks. It’s been on the low, this is our first night out with everyone together. We liked having our privacy, but she got so excited about the party that I just couldn’t say no.” 

Which isn’t a lie, to be fair. She wasn’t going to do anything tonight at all. Then Evie called and used her  _ pretty please, M, I’m batting my eyelashes so hard right now _ voice and she caved because that’s what Mal does under Evie’s spell. 

Her ex chuckles, shaking her head. “Only you would be ballsy enough to announce your relationship by making out with her right in front of her dance troupe.” 

Fuck, that’s right. Couples kiss at midnight. 

Her  _ and Evie  _ will be expected to kiss at midnight now. 

Fuck. Fuck.  _ Fuck.  _

“Starting the year off with a bang and all that,” she smirks lazily and throws up a finger gun, and she’s happy that Uma can’t read her as well as she once could because holy shit, she’s going to lose it. “I should get back in there before she starts to worry.” 

Mal had just, literally  _ just _ , come to terms with this dumb crush and now she has to convince Evie to kiss her because if she doesn’t she’s going to look like the giant liar she is which they’re not discussing because did she have to lie? No. Was there a voice in her brain telling her not to? Yes. Does Evie deserve to be dragged into these shenanigans? Absolutely not. But that is not the point! The point is definitely to find Evie and explain this unformed plan that they’re dating to prove to Uma that she is  _ not  _ hung up on her, except maybe she is just a tiny, minuscule amount, and when she does, she is going to pray that Evie agrees because she has no dignity left. Easy peasy. 

And as she reenters that godforsaken fortress of all that is evil, she can’t help but remember that this is  _ all Ben’s fault _ .


	3. vibe check (duh)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She scrambles for a less pathetic answer than ‘waiting for you to come home’ because that’s truly what it has been. “I miss you most,” she replies, which is just as, if not more, incriminating. “I’ve been watching a lot of reality dating. Do you think I’d make a good bachelorette?” 
> 
> Her best friend doesn’t even think about it. “No. You don’t like making tough decisions. You’d have fun knocking them out at first, but when you get to your bottom like… two or three and start having actual feelings? You’d dramatically dump them all saying it’s for the best because you’re too damaged or something. Or you'll go the complete opposite and on the first day make them all fight to the death.” 
> 
> She’s right. Mal would most definitely quit before needing to make a final choice, not wanting to hurt anyone if she were to make a real bond with multiple people...Unless one of those people were Evie. Then _she’d_ fight everyone on day one to the death to leave engaged to her, bachelorette or not. Evie’s going to be her choice no matter what the scenario. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pls dont come for my spanish it sucks so i used the internet also this chap is dedicated to television/so far so good by rex orange county this fic is dedicated to half that album so ! enjoy the shitstorm beginning xoxo

Things do go surprisingly easy peasy when she tracks Evie down and tugs her into the nearest closet. 

“You need me to _what_?” Evie asks in her calmest tone after a quick rundown of Mal and Uma’s history and brief summary of the balcony conversation.

Mal shows her dimples, blinking as innocently as possible. “Pretend to be my girlfriend because Uma was making me feel like shit with this whole, ‘ _Mal, you broke my heart_ ’ thing, and so I was like, ‘ _what the hell is going on!_ ’ except in my brain because I was not speaking to her at that moment, and she was like, ‘ _she calls you nicknames!’_ , so I was like ‘ _what about it?_ ’, and she was all, ‘ _How cute! I’m Uma and I want to ruin Mal’s life by making her seem pathetic!’”_

The taller girl narrows her eyes. “I don’t feel like that’s how it went…” 

She huffs out a breath in response, crossing her arms over her chest. Leave it to Evie to be logical right now. “So _maybe_ she wasn’t being as maniacal as I had previously made it seem, but she just… She makes me feel so small, E… Then she asked me how long we were together, and all I could feel was how angry it was making me that she had the nerve to act jealous with her boyfriend inside talking to you. A boyfriend that she’s had since right after our breakup.” 

Evie does her thinking face, her lips puckered and brows carefully bunched. “Fine, I’ll do it, but _you’re_ the one in charge of explaining to the boys how we went from being complete strangers to mild acquaintances to kissing at midnight.” 

Mal groans in relief. 

Easy peasy.

* * *

Turns out, Jay and Carlos don’t even end up at the party. Carlos has a stomach bug and Jay plays nurse. The girls receive simultaneous texts from either boy at around 11:30 that they won’t be there, so don’t wait around, and Mal isn’t saying she’s _happy_ Carlos is puking his guts out, but having a little extra time to figure out the right way expose her and Evie as their school’s hottest new couple? Not exactly a bad thing. 

* * *

Midnight rolls around, and with it, Mal finds herself in the same place she stood not even an hour before, only with her date taking the place beside her instead of her ex as the party counts down from sixty. 

“Uma’s watching,” Evie tells her in a soft voice. “I made sure she saw us, but I didn’t really want our first kiss to be in front of all those people.” 

Could she have been imagining a first kiss all this time, too? Was it needy, like Mal thought it would be? She always pictured they’d be older and one of them would crack under jealousy. It’d most likely be her. Evie is so open with her feelings, like a book, and Mal buries everything as deep as it can go. 

_Forty-five._

She tells Evie almost everything, though. It could be different. 

Everything with her feels so different. 

“You don’t have to do this. I’d understand if you backed out.” 

Mal wants to back out. Moonlight highlights the very top of Evie’s cheekbones, and this is a bad idea, isn’t it? It’s going to be so easy to pretend, to forget this is fake. She’s terrified of how far her heart is going to run with the inch it’s given. 

_Thirty._

“I’m not going anywhere. It’s you and me, M.” 

The issue really is that it’s already miles away. 

“Forever, E.” 

_Twenty._

Slender fingers raise, they brush against pouty lips, following along carefully and watching them fall back into place when dragged ever so slightly. 

“You can barely even see where Frankenstein stitched you up now.” 

_Ten._

“Poor you. Nothing to bully me about now, huh?” 

Evie clicks her tongue. 

_Nine._

“How many times do I have to explain to you that it was _cute_? I swear, it’s in one ear and out the other.” 

_Eight._

Her eyes dart back to the house, then she whispers, “She’s still watching, M.” 

_Seven._

Loudly, in response to their audible conversation, Mal scoffs. “Yeah, okay, _mom_.” 

_Six._

She swiftly leans up on her toes, she delivers into Evie’s ear, “Then let’s give her a show.”

_Five._

Seamlessly, a sultry laugh fills the open air. “Kinky. Pull my hair next.” 

_Four_. 

Mal pushes down the blush rising to the tips of her ears best she can. “You’re such an idiot.” 

_Three._

“And what does that say about you?” They’re leaning in now, Evie’s hands secured snugly on Mal’s waist while Mal caresses her by the jaw. 

_Two._

“That I have questionable taste?” Evie’s eyes fall shut, her nose scrunching from how hard she’s holding back a laugh at Mal’s dumb line, and she’s beautiful. She’s so fucking beautiful, and Mal is lucky enough to get to kiss her. 

_One_. 

Maybe Ben isn’t so bad.

* * *

Mal isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. This is her... _fun fact_ , her ice breaker trivia. 

Carlos is the brains. Jay is the brawn. Evie is attractive. Mal is kinda stupid. Common knowledge. 

So, as one might expect from the dumbass of her narrative, the lightbulb doesn’t go off to confront Evie on a very pressing matter until their car ride home. 

“You’re friends with Harry,” she blurts out lamely. 

Evie’s gaze doesn’t leave the road. “Well, aren’t you observant… We went to elementary school together. I used to give him makeovers.” She grins fondly, remembering a pint sized Harry, playing pirate with glitter smeared across his eyelids. “We stayed in touch, but he always says that bit about me being his first heartbreak because of the time I left him in the sandpit when we were seven to go trade stickers with Jane.” 

Mal gasps. “You _cold hearted wench_.” She gets an eye roll and considers it a success. “That’s...uh, if you’re friends with Harry, then you’d know who Uma is,” she finally says. “Why did you act like you didn’t when you walked up to us?” 

Evie hesitates, pulling up to a red light just as Mal finishes her question. “I did a vibe check. _Duh_.” 

_Right,_ Mal thinks. _Duh_. 

The light turns green, but before they move forward, Evie replaces the wheel from under her right hand with Mal’s thigh, just above her knee. “I’m _your_ girl, remember?” She gives it a squeeze, solid and steadying. “I wasn’t going to let you face that alone, even if I didn’t know what it was yet.” 

Sadly, as one might again expect from the dumbass of her narrative, she does not read the warning signs her brain sends out and just talks from her little idiot heart when it begins to thump twice as hard. “Uma was the only one that had ever called me ‘M’ before you. So when she heard you say it, she…” Mal feels ashamed that Uma so easily still manipulates her every emotion. “She got possessive when it wasn’t her place.” 

Evie’s expression is neutral, almost calculating. “So, it wasn’t just nicknames that she was upset about. It was a nickname… _her_ nickname.” 

Mal’s hand jumps to cover the one touching her, prying it gently up so that she can lace their fingers together. “ _Your_ nickname. It…” 

The car comes to a halt, a stop sign this time pausing their trip to get Mal home. 

“E…” Vulnerability coats her words, sight focused only on where their limbs are joined. “You’re the most important thing to me. When I say that you’re my girl, I mean it in the way that I’m _your girl_ , too, if you want me to be, and… fuck, I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a total fucking loser.” 

Hands entirely off the wheel, a safety hazard if Mal’s ever seen one whether they are moving or not, Evie tucks her fingers beneath her chin and forces her to make eye contact. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” 

She’s infuriating, and Mal’s laughing, laughing so hard she almost snorts, because why is she so scared to talk to Evie? It’s _Evie_ , _her_ Evie, and all she’s going to do is make things better because that’s what Evie does, so she sucks all her doubts into her lungs and pushes them out with a nice long exhale. “You were the only one ever meant to call me that. I just feel it. So, when she got all annoying and jealous, I got protective. She was trying to take claim of something that was never really hers.” 

“Mal,” Evie begins, circling back to Mal’s previous turmoil, “you do know there will never be a time or space that I won’t want you to be my girl, right?” 

If she had any dignity left, Mal might agree in some way, but, tragically, she lost the last of it long ago (read: roughly 11:00 pm) so she simply asks in a curious voice, _“Really?”_

Now, Evie snorts, fully and actually snorts in the most delightful way that Mal is going to tell her diary reinvented the colors and cured every known illness, pulling back and positioning herself to get them back on the road before another car pulls up behind them. 

“You’re really not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you?” 

No, she really isn’t. 

* * *

She’s not trying to sound like a broken record, but it’s starting to get suspicious just how easy peasy this fake dating rouse is going. 

She visits Carlos the following day, a card and container of soup from her pseudo girlfriend set down at his bedside after she enters his bedroom with a teasing smirk. “Well, don’t you look like shit.” 

“Hey!” Jay glares, walking in with a bag from the pharmacy in his grasp. “No being mean to the patient.” 

Mal rolls her eyes, sitting down next to where Carlos lays. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here on business, anyways.” 

Her sick friend gives her a funny look, raising a brow. “What business could you have so early in the day? It’s hardly noon.” His voice is rough, and she wonders if his cough is back that he’d caught when they were younger. He ended up in the hospital with pneumonia, then diagnosed with asthma and given weekly nebulizer treatments. Sure, he’d always had a wheeze, but that’s when Mal and Jay buckled down on how much dirty work they let Carlos do when they pitched a scheme. “How’re your lungs doing?” 

He waves her off, so she looks at Jay who gives her a tight lipped shrug. She’d have him call later to get the full report. “I’m _fine_ ,” Carlos insists. “I’ve had to do a few treatments, but you know how it gets when I’m sick. I’m feeling better already.” 

Mal runs her hand over his curls, ignoring the heat radiating from his skin beneath them. “I come bearing gifts, at least.” 

“ _You_ brought gifts?” Jay walks in fully, taking a seat on the other side of Carlos’s body and grabbing the card to inspect it. 

“I am simply the messenger, dipshit,” she drawls. “They’re from Evie. That’s actually my business. I… um…” 

“You and Evie kissed at Ben’s party,” Carlos nods casually. 

Mal gapes like a fish. 

“He texted us asking when that happened,” Jay explains, passing Carlos Evie’s note to read. “He’s had a thing for you forever, I guess, and we would always just point out that you’re a weird loner with two friends.” She flicks him as hard as she can. “Hey, we’re the two friends! That reflects on us, too!” 

Carlos takes over, happily focusing on Evie’s immaculately packed soup and utensils, warm and ready for consumption. “I knew you guys would hit it off. I can’t believe Evie kissed you, though. That’s pretty gutsy.” 

Mal isn’t pleased. “Who’s to say I didn’t kiss Evie?” 

She stomps out of the de Vil residence somewhere between the hysterical cackling and her own frantic shout of, “I hate it here!” 

* * *

On a Thursday, Evie tries to murder her. 

Figuratively _and_ literally. 

Evie’s mother is gone for a conference, and Mal’s mom just flat out doesn’t care, so she goes over for a sleepover. Come Monday, they’ll be in school again, and they haven’t even formed a game plan yet, so this is even, dare she say it, a strategic meet up. 

How that ties into anything? It doesn’t, but it makes Mal feel better about being so fucking eager to spend the entire night with Evie. 

Everything is going positively perfect. They are watching movies. They bake cookies. Evie braids Mal’s hair. Then, it gets quiet after the credits of _Sweet Home Alabama_ roll, and Evie says the most unbelievable thing Mal has ever heard in all her sixteen years on this planet. 

“M, do you think we should practice kissing?” 

Red flags fly _everywhere._ There’s a large flashing board in the center of her mind that spells out _N-O_. 

“Do you think so, E?” 

There’s also a nice, vivid, and crisp flashback of that time Jay discovered that screenshot on Twitter of D.W. from Arthur staring at the sign posted on a door with the caption _That sign can’t stop me because I can’t read!_ and yelling from her couch that he’d never seen something that represents her so clearly ignoring her brain’s warning signs.

“I mean, if we’re supposed to be a couple, and you told Uma that we’ve been together in secret, I just think we should look organic when we kiss and touch, don’t you?” She’s explaining it so rationally, Mal really does see where she’s coming from. 

What? She’s supposed to have Evie as a girlfriend and _not_ kiss her? Like anyone would believe that. 

“That makes sense.” It’s sort of squeaked out because Evie has almost a predatory gleam now, and she’s moving closer.

The kiss is how Mal imagined their first kiss would be, how it could still be if she holds on to her dreams. It’s frantic almost, a surge from Evie’s end to connect their lips and they're moving in unison.

Mal swears her heart skips. She sees stars, prepares to write sonnets, get the world on a silver platter to hand over. She’s at the peak of a cliff, one you’d see in a magazine or movie, and she’s staring out at an island overlooking blue seas, a cloudy day, almost stormy so that it matches the same blue she longs to see- the same blue Evie likes to wear, the same blue pleated neatly atop her head, the same blue rapidly surpassing purple for Mal’s favorite.

It gets a bit clumsy, noses bumping, and Evie makes a noise from the back of her throat that has Mal’s hand sliding up to try to touch, except everything is going fuzzy and her eyes have been closed since she could smell the mint in Evie’s chapstick, but they haven’t been this heavy the entire time. 

_Fuck,_ Evie is really going to kill her. 

She rips herself back, gasping desperately for air. She didn’t realize her lungs were crying out, practically holding back tears from how hard she’s struggling to regulate her panting. 

If she weren’t on the verge of passing out, the odd tingle of déjà vu up her spine at the shiteating smirk pulling at Evie’s lips would bring her right back to the floor of the high school’s dance studio, moments after she busted her face open. 

“Guess you can say I really took your breath away, hm, M?” 

* * *

For Mal’s birthday, her friends all chip in to get her this leather bound notebook that she has been drooling over for months, and they pile onto her couch while her mother burns cupcakes. 

(Evie gets her a card that plays _Take My Breath Away_ , the Glee Cast version, obviously, and Mal turns as red as a tomato.) 

“Mom!” Mal yelps, shoving Jay’s legs off of her lap and rushing into the kitchen at the first sign of smoke. Evie pads in after her, opening up the window while the boys can be heard wrestling in the background over the remote. 

“Mallory, I am perfectly capable of baking you a birthday treat. This is my seventeenth year doing it, need I remind you,” her mother all but glares. 

“Mother, this is your seventeenth year nearly burning down the house doing so,” Mal bickers, frowning at the blackened cupcakes filling the tray in her hands. 

“Well, that’s because I have no good help around here!” Maleficent pouts childishly, and Evie chooses then to speak up. 

“I’m really good at baking cupcakes!” 

Mal stares at her like she has three heads. 

Tonight had gone better than she predicted, especially with her mother, as she tries her best to do for the majority of Mal’s birthdays, but with Evie now _volunteering_ to help her with dessert? It’s starting to border on fever dream territory. 

“Perfect!” Maleficent grins, clapping her hands together. “We have just enough for another batch!” 

This has got to be some trick. A birthday prank? 

“What can I do?” she attempts because she has to at least try some form of damage control. Her mother is embarrassing enough, but now she has Evie, the newbie to their little friend group, going and getting all buddy-buddy with her. 

“Don’t be silly,” Evie chides, nudging her back towards where the guys were _still_ fighting over what to watch. “The birthday girl can’t make her own dessert! Go relax, we got this.” 

Maybe this is a test of strength? Patience? Sanity? 

“Yeah, _birthday girl_ ,” her mother agrees, bumping her along with her hip until she stumbles out of the doorway. “ _We got this_.” 

* * *

Mal’s mother makes them burn the second batch of cupcakes, despite Evie’s adamant declarations that they _look very_ _done_ , and she _really thinks it’s time to take them out_ , and said girl is _not_ happy that Mal is blowing out a candle on top of a honey bun for her big day. 

It’s not even that it necessarily _is_ a big day, though, because since her dad passed, Mal’s birthday sort of just became another reminder of how long he has been gone. She doesn’t like to be reminded of all that he’s missing. 

Her mother tries, truly, and she got her a really sick icing bag set with a billion types of tips and a new wooden board to roll out her modeling chocolate on because their marble countertop always makes it crack. 

(“You’re the brilliant baker,” she gushes once everyone has gone home, tucking Mal’s hair behind her ear with an apologetic sigh. “It’s only one day a year that I get to play that for you. I’m sorry I’m so lousy at it.” 

Mal catches her when she grabs the wine glass from the strainer near the sink, the kiss on her forehead not smelling of the zinfandel she has been favoring as of late. The clock reminds her that it’s after midnight, and she’s kept her promise to stay sober on the actual day, so she bites her tongue. 

She should’ve written and read aloud more. She can’t blame her mother for her own shortcomings.)

* * *

Spring break approaches faster than Mal prefers. Evie is spending it in Colombia with her mother to visit her grandmother and see a collection of aunts, uncles, and cousins- which is totally cool and awesome, but leaves her little to no time for her best friend who, by the way, has absolutely no plans. 

**_I miss you._ **

Well, besides sitting and pining after Evie and her daily texts.

_i miss you more_

_how’s home?_

Evie moved to America when she was seven, and she still gets the cutest little accent when she’s extra sleepy or gets extra worked up about something. She told her on the night of her birthday while they were airing out the fumes of Maleficent’s second burnt cupcake batch her story of immigrating, of how she came here with only her mother and her ballerina dreams. 

_“My grandmother disowned him for leaving us, and she gave us everything we needed to come here,”_ she explained. _“We owe it all to her. She gave us a fresh start.”_

**_I don’t know. How are you?_ **

Mal bites back an embarrassing squeak. She can never predict when Evie’s going to say something that sets her soul alight. 

_shut. up._

* * *

Evie finally calls her fourth night away, just before dinner. 

“Hello?” Mal answers suspiciously due to the lack of warning beforehand. 

“Hey, M,” Evie greets warmly, and Mal absolutely melts. She can hear the joy, and has her voice always been so silky? “I can’t talk long, but I’m just hanging out with some of my little cousins while my aunt makes dinner and wanted to say hi.” 

Mal shifts on her bed, pressing the phone firmly to her ear so she can make every sound out as clearly as possible. “Hi, E.” 

Evie chuckles, softly, and snorts under her breath, and fuck, Mal can’t wait until she’s home. “Hi, you dork. I miss you. What have you been up to?” 

She scrambles for a less pathetic answer than ‘waiting for you to come home’ because that’s truly what it has been. “I miss you most,” she replies, which is just as, if not more, incriminating. “I’ve been watching a lot of reality dating. Do you think I’d make a good bachelorette?” 

Her best friend doesn’t even think about it. “No. You don’t like making tough decisions. You’d have fun knocking them out at first, but when you get to your bottom like… two or three and start having actual feelings? You’d dramatically dump them all saying it’s for the best because you’re too damaged or something. Or you'll go the complete opposite and on the first day make them all fight to the death.” 

She’s right. Mal would most definitely quit before needing to make a final choice, not wanting to hurt anyone if she were to make a real bond with multiple people...Unless one of those people were Evie. Then _she’d_ fight everyone on day one to the death to leave engaged to her, bachelorette or not. Evie’s going to be her choice no matter what the scenario. 

“That’s fair,” Mal shrugs. She’ll probably start the new series where they can’t see who they’re talking with tonight. She’ll have to do it on Jay’s account because she told Carlos that she would watch with him, but what he doesn’t know won’t- 

a new voice breaks her train of thought. She can’t make it out, but it’s tiny, a flow of Spanish she wouldn’t be able to transcribe regardless in the background of Evie’s end. 

“Vete y diles que voy enseguida,” the blue haired girl says with a bit of sass. Mal can even picture the perfectly timed eye roll. “I gotta run, M. My tia is apparently already complaining about dinner being cold because I’m out here on my phone even though it’s _not even en los platos!_ ” She makes sure to raise her voice dramatically towards the end, and Mal makes sure to ignore how hot she thinks Evie speaking Spanish is. “Porque puedo ver a través de la ventana!” 

Really ignore it because she truly understood none of that, but holy shit, Evie’s voice is rasping in just the right way and it sounds like she’s saying the words right into Mal’s ear and she can vividly remember how soft her lips are- 

“M? Are you still there?” 

Just barely.

“Yeah, of course.” 

With something thinner than thread keeping her wound together. 

“I really have to go this time, but I’ll text you tonight and see you when I get home on Sunday. I already have so many gifts for you!” 

“I told you that you didn’t have to-“ 

“M, shut up, I have to _go_. We don’t have time for you to be annoying about your presents.”

She knows better than to argue. “I’m shutting up.” 

“I’ll call the media,” Evie quips, then pauses for more conversation behind her. “I’ll talk to you later. Te queiro, M.” 

Mal thinks her cheekbone might be bruised from how hard she’s holding the phone to it, and her entire body is very possibly overheating from two simple words. “I love you, too, E. Talk to you tonight.” 

At least she’ll die happy. 

* * *

Evie’s flight home arrives after Mal is in bed, preparing to return to school after a week of staying up all night missing honey swirled eyes and the dip in a perfectly carved chin, so they plan on reuniting in the morning.

They have a routine in school now that they follow, one Mal is pretty fond of. There are still no classes that they share, so they meet for breakfast. Evie stops and gets Mal’s favorite jelly donuts from the coffee shop a mile from their campus, and they’ll sit and talk before the first bell. Mal will walk Evie to her classes, every single period throughout the day because she doesn’t care about being late, with both their bags hanging from either shoulder so their fingers can remain linked. At each door, Evie delivers a soft kiss to her favorite dimple, the left one because that’s the one she wakes up to when they fall asleep next to each other, and Mal winks before she strolls off. Then, when it’s time to head home, they meet at Mal’s locker with Jay and Carlos, everyone sharing details of their days, hands interlocked with their significant others. 

It all repeats until the weekend. 

It’d been the exact same since winter break had ended, and so seeing Evie strut towards her with sun kissed skin, so perfectly tanned, and with the way the rays of light from the morning sky are hitting her? She’s genuinely _glowing_. She’s _radiant_. She’s a _fucking goddess,_ and Mal is just… well, _Mal,_ so she gets up to go welcome her back, and does what she does best. 

She falls right on her fucking face as soon as Evie cracks the slightest smile. 

She doesn’t budge, preferring the concrete of the school's outdoor patio to Evie’s satisfied snickering.

“You know, M, we've got to stop meeting like this.” 

* * *

No stitches are required, thanks to all the heavens Evie fell out of when she was created. 

There’s a hideous bruise that would take a whopping amount of concealer to hide, so she doesn’t. She wears it proudly, and Evie asks her in the sweetest voice before each period as Mal is handing over her books, “Does it still hurt?” 

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” the smaller girl pouts because she knows what she gets when she sacrifices her tough guy act. 

Evie nods in faux sympathy, playing along as Mal tilts her chin up to meet her, and the softest of kisses gets pressed to the hues of purple and blue staining Mal’s jawline. “How about now?” 

A mischievous smirk is exchanged. “I think my lips are a bit sore.” 

Evie snorts and shoves her by the shoulder, just in time for Carlos to come walking along with Jay. 

“Stop making out in the hallway. Some of us are trying to _learn_ ,” Jay scoffs, passing along Carlos’s things so that he can go into his shared chemistry class with Evie. 

“Yeah? When you see them, tell them to say it to my face!” Mal bites, pecking Evie’s cheek before Jay chases her off towards the gym shouting about his last nerve and her being on it. 

* * *

She’s on the bleachers fifteen minutes later when it hits her that this is fake. 

It’s _supposed_ to be fake. 

She’s just not great at fake feelings, she thinks, and maybe that’s where this went sideways. She thought that she could pretend to date Evie in the first place. 

No, getting cornered on the balcony is where it must’ve gone wrong. She shouldn’t have even gone to the party, but Evie wanted her there so badly, and she has such a hard time denying Evie. 

No, meeting Uma is how this began. If she’d never met Uma, if she’d never fallen in love in the first place, she wouldn’t be trapped in this impossible situation with Evie, sinking helplessly and deeper.

But she’ll never regret meeting Uma. 

They were fourteen- _barely_ fourteen, Uma’s birthday was the day before- and all Mal wanted to do was learn to swim. She went to the community pool right when it opened in hopes of sparing herself the embarrassment of anyone she knew being there, and very pleasantly to her surprise, it was vacant, aside from one resident all the way in the deep end. She figured it wouldn’t be an issue, she wasn’t planning on going beyond the middle depth, but then she made the mistake of glancing over again, and she was awestruck. 

Uma was completely carefree, doing underwater somersaults, laughing freely, splashing on her own with braids in a color that matched the water. She popped back up just in time to catch Mal gaping, and she smiled curiously, even going as far as to wave. 

_“You know, it’s not polite to stare,”_ Uma had sassed her, swimming over to the shallows. 

When she stood, it surprised Mal to see that she was just about the same height as her. _“You’re shrimpier than I thought you would be from over there.”_

Uma quirked a brow, as if debating whether or not to take offense. _“Thinking of me already? Here I was ready to fight over territory.”_

Mal cracked a smile, her dimples just barely out. _“I usually save that for the second date.”_

Then Uma smiled, _really_ smiled, and Mal was a goner. She can still smell the chlorine, still has the bikini she wore tucked away, the receipt from the counter in her memory box in the top of her closet. 

_“I’m Uma.”_

It’s what love is to her. The definition of it is so simple; chlorine and treehouses and starlight and sticky syrup kisses. 

_“Mal.”_

* * *

On the anniversary of her father’s death, Mal curls up on her bed with her phone shut off, not planning to speak to anyone until she awakes the following day. It’s on a Saturday this year, sparing her from missing class, the boys are more than familiar with how this goes, and her mother is working as late as she possibly can as she does every time this day rolls around, so she really doesn’t expect to have any company. 

She should know better by now.

Evie shows up with lunch; Mal’s favorite soup from the diner all the way downtown with extra rolls. 

And Mal tries to tell her, really. 

“E, it’s not a good-“ 

“Carlos told me what today is,” Evie cuts her off, swiftly shuffling around the kitchen to get the necessary dishes to serve their meal. “No one should grieve alone.” 

So, she humors her. She hopes that maybe after lunch, maybe a movie or two, she’ll be called back home by her mother and then Mal will be free to want to die in peace. 

“My mom’s out of town until tomorrow night, so don’t think you’re getting rid of me before then.”

Can Evie read minds? 

* * *

For the first time in the four years he has been gone, Mal doesn’t spend the entire day in pain. A majority of it she is cuddled up on the couch, tucked into Evie’s side with an arm draped across her waist. 

She doesn’t cry until they’re in bed, face to face, and Evie asks where Mal’s mother is. 

“She won’t come home tonight,” Mal tells her, lips pressing into a thin line. She always gets a hotel room when she finishes her work on the anniversary, sending a text that she’ll be back in the morning after Mal has sobbed herself to sleep. “She doesn’t come home when it’s a day that has to do with him.” 

“She just leaves you here alone?” Evie gasps, hating the nod she receives. “Mal, that's… That’s horrible…” 

It’s Mal’s greatest fear. The panic bubbles in her chest, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. “She just can’t handle it, Evie,” she jumps to defend her mother, hoping to salvage her image. “I get it. I can take care of myself just fine. I shouldn’t be such a baby.” 

Her anxieties calm when she feels the weight of a hand settle firmly against her cheek, the pad of Evie’s thumb swiping her frantic tears away. “You’re not a baby for wanting her for this. You deserve a mother that’s present, M. I’m sorry that she can’t be that for you right now.” 

Mal can only blink back, her emotions in a frenzy. Part of her knows that Evie is right, and she should have an _actual_ mother, but there’s so much of her that feels she should be grateful that her mom is even alive. Not that today is about her mom. 

Fuck, he would’ve never let any of this happen. 

If he were around, Maleficent wouldn’t work half as many hours. She would laugh and paint again, how she used to in the living room wearing messy jean overalls a size too big with the radio blasting when Mal was a toddler. If he were around, Mal would be openly writing. Her stories would be filling the fridge like her haikus about strawberries and fire-breathing dragons used to. If he were around-

“My dad would’ve loved you.” 

Evie stares at her like she just revealed something mystical. “ _Really?_ ” 

“Absolutely,” Mal confirms, grinning ear to ear. He would’ve liked her attitude and the way it keeps Mal on her toes. He’d admire her eye for politics, even slip in that he was president of his fourth grade class if she would want any pointers, and Mal would beg him to stop being so embarrassing. He’d appreciate the optimism and light she provides, the encouragement she is to Mal. “Almost as much as I do.” 

Evie gives her the saddest smile. “I wish I could’ve known him.” 

Above all else, he would’ve been over the moon with the love Evie and Mal clearly share. 

“Me too, E.” 

* * *

At the next regional dance event organized, Evie’s mother is out of town again, thankfully leaving the space for Mal to play the supportive girlfriend. She even shows up early with a little lunch bag that she filled with Evie’s favorite fruits in tupperware she had to go and buy because none of her own had matching lids.

Uma is here, she knows because Evie texted her six barfing emojis in warning.

**_I just saw her around the corner at the vending machines. Get back here and make out with me or something._ **

Mal doesn’t need to be told twice. She sprints from the entrance to the dressing rooms, nearly tripping over Evie in the process of making it back to her, but her blue haired beauty catches her, just in time for Uma to catch them in the absurdly comical pose. 

“Just couldn’t wait to see me?” Evie smirks. 

“No more lines about falling for you? You’re losing your edge,” Mal says, ignoring the way her skin tingles as Evie’s grip tightens around her waist. 

All bets are off as soon as she pulls her in close, their lips nearly brushing, and in a velvety smooth voice, Evie triumphantly says, “I thought that it was a given. I mean… I did _catch_ you, after all.” 

* * *

Uma finds her while Harry is dancing of all moments, he and his partner Desiree in clear view of them, gliding across the open floor, and she asks if they can talk in private. Mal agrees, already separated from Evie and Carlos who are preparing for their own number, and they make their way to a secluded hallway a few dozen feet away. 

“I just wanted to apologize for the party,” Uma admits. “I overstepped my boundaries.” 

Mal scoffs. “Yeah, you could say that again.” 

“I’m trying to make this right,” the other girl frowns, her arms folding in front of her. “That’s more than you’ve ever done.” 

And that’s all it takes to push Mal over the edge. She swallows down the tears she can feel flooding to the surface, hiding any trace of visible vulnerability in her face. “Really rich coming from the girl that replaced me in a month.” 

Uma stands down, and Mal can see the pain in her. She knows that she still cares about her because why else would she be here? And Mal is breaking her heart all over again. “That’s not what Harry is…” 

“Then what is he?” Mal barks, vicious and bitter. “Is _he_ your true love, Uma? Everything you can bring home to family dinner?” Her voice cracks, softening only slightly when she steps forward. “He’s everything I wasn’t, and you love him for that, don’t you? You _tell_ him that, don’t you?” 

She knows that she does. She _can_ , a simple luxury they couldn’t afford. 

The fourth time those sacred words are spoken between Mal and Uma, it’s so quiet that Mal almost misses it. 

Under her breath, ashamed and guilt stricken, Mal hears Uma’s broken confession. 

_“I will never love him the way I love you.”_

* * *

She cries it out, as one does in an impossible situation, and a complete stranger finds her sobbing her brains away at the bottom of a stairwell. 

Of course, the girl who finds her would be gorgeous, devastatingly stunning, and she’d be wearing a flowing pink gown that sways when she takes a seat beside Mal. 

“I don’t want to intrude, but you kind of seem like you could use a buddy.” 

And Mal’s _weak_ , okay? So she spills her guts out. She tells this girl everything from meeting Uma to their downfall to Evie’s note to their fake dating ploy to the shitty conversation that led to their lovely meeting and the creation of the ultimate new best friendship of Mal and...

“Fuck, what’s your name?”

The stranger smiles politely, sticking her hand out which she eagerly shakes. “Audrey.” 

“Well, any advice?” 

Audrey puts on her best thinking face, pouting her lips in a way Mal finds enticingly adorable. “Sounds like you need to get laid, in my professional opinion.” 

Now, Mal isn’t usually one to consider having sex in a dirty stairwell with a girl she just met, but with Audrey sitting there looking like _that?_ She’s not exactly counting it out _._ She puts on her best poker face. “Know anyone that can help with that?” 

The other girl shrugs casually, playing coy. “I may know someone.” 

Is she really going to come out of this with a fuck buddy? She’s not complaining, but seriously? Not where she saw today going.

“Do you do this for all the girls you find crying on random steps?” she asks as Audrey pulls the her phone from where it stuck out of her jacket pocket, letting Mal unlock it so that she could enter in her number. 

“You're my first, but if it’s going to work out like this, I might have to try it out more often,” the brunette winks before she delivers a lingering kiss to the corner of Mal’s lips, clearly preparing to leave now that the mood had lightened. 

But Mal feels bold, so she lurches forward and steals one directly from the source itself.

Maybe because she just got her heart handed back to her by Uma. 

Maybe because she’s going to have to do this with Evie at any moment for show, blowing off what damage it is causing her emotionally. 

Maybe because she’s tired of lying and the rush of having Audrey so close, feeling something so _real,_ is intoxicating.

Then, she becomes someone that has sex in a dirty stairwell with a girl she just met. 

What the _fuck_ is she going to tell Evie? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the more i write the closer i get to writing an entire fic around uma and mal yall dont even know what i wrote in ch 4 that got me FUCKED UP w them  
> anyways idk when the next update will be bc the next chap im iffy on how i feel about and i have barely anything for ch 5 done and i like being 1 ahead before i post but thank u to everyone that leaves kudos and comments ily!!!! this is only gonna get wilder and wilder u may not think so bc mal is fuckin wildin already but it all comes together in the end  
> also i’m updating the content rating but there’s nothing graphic just like general sex so i guess it’s mature idk i always jump to actual smut in my mind when i see mature ratings but i realized in the next chapter(s?) mal mentions it a lot so? i’ll change that from teen


	4. method acting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hours later, once they’re in Mal’s bed covered only by the sheets, Evie leans over and gives her the lightest of kisses. 
> 
> “What was that for?” she questions, eyes following as Evie places her ear to Mal’s chest. 
> 
> “For being my girl.”
> 
> And that’s that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dedicated to nothing by rex orange county bc evie nd mal do be crossin some boundaries !  
> sidenote is anyone else thinking about sofia carson putting honey on her quarantine playlist cause it's been a few hours since she posted it and i'm still thinkin about it

She tells Evie the truth because who is she kidding?

(Mostly the truth. She refuses to think about what Uma said to her.)

It’s over the phone a few days later because they haven’t had a moment outside of school together that Mal hasn’t been wrapped up in everything Audrey, but she tells her practically all the details and _that’s what matters._

Evie is _not_ happy, but that’s only because Mal missed her routine, so that’s fair, but she can’t talk this over for very long because Audrey is expecting her at her place in like fifteen minutes, so Mal is _trying her very darnedest_ to communicate properly.

“I just don’t get why you would have sex with her,” Mal can see Evie’s frown, picture her brows firmly fighting to meet. She had only told her that she met a new friend on the actual day because they were rushing to get dinner with the guys, so, really, this could be going a lot worse. “What if she tells Uma?” 

“That’s not an issue, remember? She’s homeschooled.” Mal grins, another reason Audrey is absolutely and entirely what she needs right now. Her parents have a knack for traveling, meaning she has been enrolled in an online schooling system for as long as she can remember. Dance is what they put her in to keep her sense of community, and she competes simply for fun. “She doesn’t even know Uma.” 

“So, you _slept with her?_ ” 

Mal glances at her phone for the time. She really has to leave. She said she’d grab some food, too. Should she call or text Audrey for her order? They’re going to watch some musical that the other girl sounded super excited about. “E, I promise I won’t leave your side at another competition, okay? Audrey is waiting on me, though, so I gotta run.” 

There’s a long pause, long enough that Mal almost thinks Evie hung up, but then she responds. “Fine. I’ll talk to you later.” 

_Click._

Mal lets out a long groan. 

She is _never_ missing one of Evie’s dance numbers again. 

* * *

Carlos finds out- he _always_ finds out- that Mal watched Love is Blind without him using Jay’s account while Evie was in Colombia, so he eggs her house. 

Like, pelts four dozen jumbo, free range, organic, whatever else Whole Foods bullshit that Mal knows he buys at the front of her home while she’s sleeping.

She, interestingly enough, thinks she’s being abducted by aliens in the moment through her haze of pure exhaustion. She immediately calls Evie and leaves the following voicemail:  
“Hey, E. It’s M. I just wanted to-” Pause for a yawn. “-call ya before they beam me up. This is it. This is my final statement. I leave everything to my imaginary dragon. I love you. Oh, fuck-” Another break, this time for a few eggs to hit her bedroom window. “ _I’m coming!_ This is me. It was great knowing you. I love you again. Bye.” 

Evie is less than thrilled to come to find that the cause of her panic in the morning is Carlos playing a prank over a Netflix reality show hosted by Nick and Vanessa fucking Lachey, and then she declares that she can’t be mad at Mal anymore because she is simply too stupid to survive on her own.

Mal does not object.

* * *

“Do you think we could ever be girlfriends?” she asks Audrey, her fingertips lazily tracing patterns across her bare back. They’re in Mal’s bed, doing what they do on Friday nights now. She used to spend Friday nights watching drag shows on YouTube with Evie, but this is easier on her heart, so she prefers it. 

They’ve had their _arrangement_ , as Audrey calls it, for going on two months now. Mal calls it a relationship, but only in her head because Audrey would roll her eyes for adding more complications into her already messy life. 

They’d acknowledged liking each other in the very beginning, their second night together, but they also acknowledged Mal’s fake girlfriend for the sake of her ex girlfriend and her complex emotions surrounding the two that led them to meeting.

“Would you want us to be?” she gets asked curiously, her partner in bed turning over so they come face to face.

Audrey could very easily be her dream girl. She’s funny and charming. She’s gorgeous. She makes her feel like the world around them disappears. 

That’s all she could ever need.

“I would.”

Isn’t it?

* * *

The last time she talked about Audrey to Evie, it didn’t go _perfectly_ , but she is still Mal’s best friend, so it’s as good of a time as any at their first sleepover in weeks to bring up their conversation.

“Audrey and I talked about being girlfriends,” she says from her side of Evie’s bed, breaking the silence as they lay in the dark. 

“You can’t be girlfriends,” Evie blurts out. “We’re girlfriends.”  
“ _Fake_ girlfriends,” Mal corrects, but Evie reiterates more forcefully. 

“ _We’re_ girlfriends.” She twists her entire body, noticeably offended Mal would suggest otherwise. “You can’t just meet some random girl at one of _my_ dance competitions and forget that, M.” Her hand glides along her sheets, between their bodies until it’s cupping Mal’s cheek. She then speaks in the most hushed voice, “You’re _my_ girl, aren’t you?”

And, fuck. She is. She really, _really_ is, so Mal nods, miserably and pathetically wrapped around Evie’s perfectly manicured finger. 

* * *

Evie proposes that they start sleeping together the next morning for _authenticity, M!_

“Is this about the girlfriend thing with Audrey? Because I get it. I won’t blow our cover, E.” 

“No, this is about _method acting_. Are you two exclusive or something? Little Miss Homeschool never learned to share?”

Mal knows that she should say no. The red flags are back with blinking lights on their poles, but borderline mean Evie is even hotter than Evie speaking Spanish, so…

She’s not proud of how weak she is. 

She does set the boundary of running it by Audrey first, to clarify that they aren’t committed, because if there are any lucky stars in the sky, Audrey will have an issue with Evie’s absurd reasoning and put an end to this-

but alas, Audrey is a perfect human, and gives Mal the standard, “It’s your life, babe, and we’re not anything exclusive just yet. You don’t need my permission for your method acting fuckfest.” 

Damn it. Damn it. _Damn it._

* * *

Sex with Evie is not anything like she expects. 

To start off with, she is planning on there being dinner or something. A slow song, maybe? She doesn’t mean to sound like a softie, but it’s _Evie._ She thinks there will at least be mood lighting. 

Not that she’s complaining about being shoved against her own front door as soon as Evie walks in, but it is just not what she had imagined when this insane scheme was placed into her brain last weekend. 

Also, she does not conceptualize Evie as so… _aggressive_ in her fantasies. When they finally find their way to the couch, Evie is straddling her, relentlessly going at her neck leaving mark after mark, and she is trying to hold back frankly the most embarrassing whimpers she’s ever produced, the _only_ ones if you were to ask her.

There’s a moment when their hips grind together and Mal sees stars. Evie whines right into her ear, begging her for more, and it hits her that the reason she never envisioned any of this was that all this time she was conjuring up an illusion of love.

To Evie, this is just lust. 

* * *

Hours later, once they’re in Mal’s bed covered only by the sheets, Evie leans over and gives her the lightest of kisses. 

“What was that for?” she questions, eyes following as Evie places her ear to Mal’s chest. 

“For being my girl.”

And that’s that.

* * *

The only detail she leaves out when describing her stairwell interaction to Evie is that she was a virgin when it happened because awkwardly stopping post orgasm to pant out, “So, I’ve never actually done this before, so if I suck, please talk to me again,” and the completely blown away look Audrey gave her is not something she’s putting in a newsletter. 

It all worked out for the best, and Mal was shockingly good at what she did before Audrey had to find her godmothers for pictures after her fix, but that desperate for approval side of her? Always there, just not her favorite.

The boys kindly burst her bubble when they walk in unannounced the following morning and see Mal in her kitchen, preparing french toast for when Evie awakes. 

“Don’t you knock?” she drawls, not even turning her head. 

“Well, _someone_ , doesn’t answer her phone, and we haven’t seen you in the flesh in like…” 

“Since you egged my house,” Mal interrupts Carlos, sticking her tongue out in his direction. “That doesn’t have anything to do with it. I’ve just been busy.” 

“Well, I'll kick your ass if you repeat this,” Jay speaks up, wandering over to the counter and stealing an apple, “but we miss our best friend.” 

Mal freezes. It’s been a while since she’s called them that. 

Carlos chuckles sheepishly, his voice small and worried. “We’re just so out of the loop. We used to know about everything.”

She feels absolutely rotten. 

“I’m sorry,” she says earnestly, moving her pan to a back burner and turning off the stove. She turns around to look at them. “I’ve just had a lot going on, and it’s weird trying to balance new peo-“

“Holy shit, you have a hickey!” Jay’s face lights up. 

Her hand flies to her neck. “Wrong side, dumbass!” 

Evie enters wearing a pair of Mal’s shorts under the largest t-shirt she could find, her face bare and hair messy enough to make it clear she is just waking up. “You guys are loud,” she pouts, and everyone stares at her for a second. 

The boys are purely jovial. 

“I knew we were missing some details, but _losing your virginity_ , Mal?” Carlos inquires, looking between the two of them. “That’s at least a text.”

Evie’s brows furrow, and she’s not talking about the two of them when she asks, “You were a virgin?” 

“She didn’t _know_?!” Jay howls, and Mal throws a wooden spoon right at his big, ugly head. 

“Aw, M, you’re blushing,” Evie coos, coming up next to her and sweeping her hair to one shoulder. 

“I am _not_ ,” Mal grumbles, shaking her off, but Evie relents, brushing a knuckle to her favorite of Mal’s dimples. 

“It’s cute,” she grins, leaning down. “Good morning, M.” 

“Good morning, E,” Mal whispers, and then she kisses her, steady and reassuring, her hands finding the warmth of Evie’s waist beneath the hem of her shirt. 

“Hey! There are people trying to eat here!” Jay groans with a mouth full of fruit. 

Evie leans over, playfully biting at Mal’s shoulder and soothing it with a peck. “That’s what I'm saying…” 

“That’s _gross_ ,” Carlos pesters, grabbing Jay by the hand. “We will be on the couch, waiting for some _family friendly_ breakfast.” 

Mal all but cackles, and Evie holds her tighter in her arms. “Don’t hold your breath,” she calls out after him.

Once they’re finally alone, she expects Evie to pull away, but she stays just as close. “You’re clingy in the mornings,” Mal observes, rotating her body so that she can get back to work at preparing breakfast with Evie wrapped around her from behind. 

“Are you complaining?” Evie teases, loosening her grip, but Mal quickly knocks her head back and rests it on her best friend’s shoulder. 

“I’d never,” she promises, stealing a kiss from her jaw. Her attention goes back to the food, now preparing four times the amount with how Jay eats. She’ll have to make a new grocery list for more bread later, and eggs, and milk, and syrup. 

Is this what it’s going to be like to have kids? 

Evie breaks her train of thought, whispering something she can’t quite hear. 

“What’d you say, E?” 

The touch around her torso wavers, and Evie takes a deep breath. “I said that I’ve missed you, M.” 

“But I’m right here.” Sure, she’s been a little distracted lately, but it couldn’t have affected Evie that much, right? 

Evie sighs, not content but almost in frustration, and she nods, giving Mal a firm squeeze. “Yeah, you are.” 

* * *

“So, how was it?” Audrey asks first thing, before Mal can even get her boots off. 

“Is this some sort of trick question?” Mal wonders aloud, making her way to Audrey’s couch. 

She gets a pointed eye roll. “Not that I would care about hearing about the sex, but I’m talking about emotionally, dumbass.” She waves to the half ass job Mal did with concealer on her neck. “You’re marked up and down. I can’t imagine that your heart is taking this lightly.” 

Mal exhales deeply. It’s most certainly not. “She said that she missed me. It’s like she thinks this is just another way to get close. To her, we’re basically having a movie night.” She tucks her head onto Audrey’s shoulder. “I was so excited about our girlfriend talk, and I feel like I ruined everything that was building up to by whatever this is with Evie.” 

Audrey rubs a hand along her thigh. “You didn’t ruin anything, you big drama queen. You’re confused, and that’s why we can’t be anything more. I really like you, and I firmly believe that if we’re meant to be something, we will be, but until that point, it’s not my place to get possessive.” 

She turns until her lips find skin to press against, tugging at the sleeve of her oversized shirt to trail languid kisses to a tan collarbone. “I really like you, too, princess.” 

Audrey’s body shakes with laughter. “I’m too tired to get you off _one time_ , and I’m labeled a pillow princess for life!” 

“If the tiara fits…” 

They wrestle for a moment, Audrey using all of her strength to pin Mal to the sofa with her arms above her head, a victorious smirk playing on her face. “I’ll show you a princess…” she all but growls, and Mal is about to argue that her statement doesn’t even make sense, but then they’re too busy doing other things to do much talking at all.

In a perfect world, Mal wonders if it would be her and Audrey living out a happily ever after. 

She hopes so.

* * *

Evie does not let the ‘Mal losing her virginity in the gross flight of steps’ thing go. 

It’s not like Mal was completely inexperienced. Her and Uma had gone as far as grinding, heavily making out and stripping most layers of their clothes. There’s that guy from her mother’s work- Aziz, the one that was interning around the time of every company party Mal went to immediately following the breakup to just get out of the house- that she would fool around with in the mail room while all the adults were mingling. She’s certainly no stranger to her own body. 

She had just never gone _all the way_ , never felt _the need_ to go all the way, and sue her for getting distracted by the curved neckline of Audrey’s dress, the alluring draw of the gloss on her lips, the slit revealing the smooth skin of her legs-

Fuck, is it hot in here? 

“-and not to mention the _infections_ that you could’ve gotten, Mal,” Evie continues, her arms up as she emphasizes her ten minute speech on how she just does not understand how one just gives up their virginity in a _dirty, icky, nasty stairwell!_

“Are you slut shaming me?” Mal teases, regretting it as soon as Evie reels back with a small gasp. 

“I would _never_ ! I am going to support you in every tendency you have, especially your slutty ones-“ Mal holds back a snicker at hearing Evie say _slutty_ so casually, especially after a whopping _icky_ was delivered, “-but it’s so unsanitary!” Evie sits down beside her with a pout, folding her arms in front of her. “I just don’t understand why you would pursue something with someone that starts that in _public_ . Where it’s _disgusting_.” 

“So you’re slut shaming Audrey,” Mal smirks, ignoring Evie’s glare. 

“I’m not slut shaming anyone.” Evie says quickly, almost harshly, and Mal eyes her curiously. She takes her hands and settles them on her lap, tapping the tips of her fingers against each other anxiously. Carefully, she exposes her true thoughts.“I… I don’t like how she took advantage of you.” 

Mal blinks back, lips pursed. 

“You were crying, and she just comes in and she... _seduces_ you?” 

She is coming from a place of protection, and Mal understands that, but she’s misinformed. “E, you do know that I initiated things, right?”

Evie looks absolutely betrayed. 

“What?” 

“ _I’m_ the one that kissed _her_. She didn’t… take advantage of me or whatever. I wanted to do everything that we did.” 

Evie’s face goes completely blank, then hardens. “ _Oh._ ” 

_Yeah,_ Mal hums to herself, feeling triumphant over nothing she understands. _Oh._

* * *

Something changes between them. 

Mal can’t place it perfectly, but she knows that Evie sits a lot closer when they’re alone, and she kisses her goodbye even when no one is looking. 

When they’re touching, when she’s got a leg locked on either side of her waist and a fistful of purple hair in her grip, she asks Mal in a low voice, “Whose girl are you?” 

And Mal, desperate and breathy, thinks she might be in love because Evie looks so fucking beautiful. 

Not hot, not sexy, but _beautiful,_ demanding an answer from her, and her mascara and eyeshadow are smeared, smudged across her lower lash line because she forgot to buy more setting spray the last time she was at the mall. Her lipstick has spread beyond her outer corners, even down near her chin, and it’s probably covering Mal’s own face like a child’s with frosting after eating birthday cake, and she’s so goddamn beautiful that there’s nothing else Mal can say but- 

“I’m all yours, E.” 

Because she is. Above anything else, she’s Evie’s girl, and Evie is her girl, and she ignores the churning in the pit of her stomach when it starts to settle that Evie doesn’t love her in that way. 

So, instead of sleeping when they’re done, or attempting to cuddle, Mal turns on her side, staring off at her dresser. 

“Are you alright?” Evie asks, wrapping an arm around her from behind. 

“Just not sleepy,” Mal lies. 

She’s stupid, _so fucking stupid_ , and this unrequited love bullshit is going to eat her alive. 

“Me neither,” Evie yawns, lying herself, and it draws out a chuckle from under Mal’s breath. 

“You can sleep,” Mal assures her, still not daring to look back. She doesn’t think she can face Evie right now, exhausted and extra touchy. It’s hard enough with her pressed against Mal’s back. “I’ll probably just read.” 

There’s a poetry book she picked up from the library last week that she’s been wanting to crack into. 

This grabs Evie’s attention. “Read me a bedtime story?” 

And Mal’s in love with her, so what’s she going to say? No? “What do you want to hear?” 

She sits up and swings her legs off her mattress, pulling the stray limb from her torso so she can lean over and prepare to list off the novels she has stacked on her nightstand shelf. Before she can begin, Evie happily chirps, “My favorite, please!” 

Mal freezes, thinking hard about every conversation they’d ever held. Not once had Evie brought up her favorite book. She surely would’ve remembered, probably would’ve memorized it. “How do you know I have it?” 

Evie rolls her eyes and says as if it’s obvious, “Because I bought it for you.”

Practically bashful, Mal grabs _The Little Prince_. “This is your favorite?”

Her fake girlfriend nods, getting cozy beneath her blanket. “Of course. It’s your favorite, and you’re my favorite, so it’s my favorite.” Like it’s the most logical thing in the universe. 

Mal’s heart pounds in her chest, the low thumping in her ears reminding her that this is all real. She’s about to ask if there’s a specific section Evie has in mind when the silence is broken. 

“Can you read my favorite part? With the mushroom man and do the voices, M?” 

Mal begins to flip through the pages, skimming for chapter seven as Evie’s eyes flutter shut. Nostalgia weighs heavy in the back of her mind as familiar words slip from her tongue.

“Whatever you wish, my rose.” 

* * *

She stops sleeping with Audrey. 

It doesn’t feel good anymore. 

Well, it feels _good,_ but not emotionally, so they agree to being just friends, and they have _actual_ movie nights now where their clothes stay on and Audrey doesn’t have to pay a fee for returning it a day late. 

(She always had to rewatch everything they rented the next afternoon, once Mal was completely out of the house and too far to distract her because she made the mistake of actually borrowing films she wanted to see _every! single! time!)_

They still occasionally kiss, just little pecks hello and goodbye out of habit, but it’s just that- _habit_. They’re not hurting anyone by doing it, and it’s entirely platonic, so they shrug it off when it happens and move on. 

The benefits fade away, and they’re left as friends, so wonderfully fit that they joke about when they were more. 

(“Mal, stop licking from my popsicle! It’s gross!” 

“Princess, my tongue has been in far more intimate places than your popsicle…” 

“Stop calling me princess! And shut up so I can hear the movie!”)

(Mal jokes. Audrey yells at her and hits her with a pillow until she apologizes and leaves to buy her an ‘I’m sorry I’m so annoying’ icee from the gas station down the road.) 

In the car, though, sipping from Audrey’s straw just to irritate her because she’ll see a noticeable gulp taken, Mal just knows that even if their happily ever after isn’t as a couple, it’ll still be side by side. 

* * *

“I really like that Evie,” Maleficent comments one morning in passing, earning a small smile from Mal who is preparing to leave for school. 

Her mother has a cookie in her hand, courtesy of Evie’s oven for the school’s bake sale. She bid on the platter when dropping off Mal’s cake for the event as soon as she saw the nameplate, probably more than what was necessary to go to the PTA, but she told Mal she admired how Evie cut her treats into little crowns. 

“She’s a good addition to your little group of misfits,” she continues, munching happily and dropping a few crumbs on her work suit. She’s been doing a lot better lately, been a _lot_ more present. Mal is trying not to hold her breath about it, but it’s hard.

Casually talking, bantering before school and work over sweets and girls and feeling so painfully _normal_? It’s so fucking hard. 

“She is, isn’t she?” the younger girl coyly adds, grabbing her keys and stealing a cookie for herself. 

“You two are _especially close_ , aren't ya?” Maleficent smirks. 

Mal decides against this conversation, _especially_ before eight in the morning. “Gotta get to breakfast! People to meet and all that! Love you!” 

She rushes out the door, blocking out the cackling and shouted, “Oh yeah? Who? _Evie_?” 

* * *

Her mother was indifferent to Uma.

She was in the thick of her budding alcoholism, so she didn’t get the chance to get to know her very well. The girls’ time was spent in Uma’s treehouse, inventing worlds where they would have homes to safely bring each other to. 

For different reasons, they made it their oasis. 

Mal sought stability. Her mother never minded her sexuality, always loving her and all her heart is capable of, but she lacked what Mal craved in a warm, soothing figure. She closed herself off, took every pain she felt out on her daughter. She stopped being what was expected of a mother for a very long time.

She’s improved, clearly and extremely. She makes meals and talks more. She takes interest in what Mal is doing. She openly cares again. It was really bad in the beginning, and Mal gets it- really, she does- so she doesn’t hold it against her. Everyone grieves differently. 

She never tried to know Uma. She wasn’t capable of it, Mal thinks, and it’s not that she _disliked_ her, just never favored her for any reason. 

It’s why hearing her compliment Evie means so much to her. 

She and Uma used to sit in the branches playing make believe. It’d be just like they were tiny children, ones wearing pearls and feather adorned hats to throw tea parties in, and they’d be side by side, using their fanciest voices as they hosted fantasized _Family Days_ where they had put together parents for one another to meet. 

Mal would imagine her father alive. She’d visualize her parents bickering playfully, how they always did before her father would say something that left her mother speechless. She would smack his arm lightly and he’d throw his head back, laughing with his whole chest at the woman he loves. 

Then, they’d meet Uma, her dazzling, wisecracking Uma, and they’d all sit. They’d eat, and drink, and chat, and be a perfect fit. They’d be happy. They’d be _normal_. 

_“Do you think things will be different for us when we’re older?”_ Uma wondered on a particularly late _Family Day_ , her fingers combing through Mal’s hair as they stretched out on the wooden floor of their little hideout. 

_“I’d like to hope so,”_ Mal answered back honestly, green eyes locked on a polaroid the two of them had just hung up right beside the cutout for the window. They’re simply beaming in it, Uma’s attention solely on Mal as Mal focuses on the camera lens. She wished for a copy for her memory box. _“What do you want to do once we graduate?”_

Uma didn’t give it much thought. She’d only transferred schools a few weeks before, and they had a few years left. She was never one that loved to sit dwelling over the future. Her mother expected her to take over the diner. That’s why on _Family Day_ , perfect Ursula boasted about the lists of universities that Uma was deciding between, the ones she’d never realistically even get to visit. Not that Uma was even sure she wanted to go to college, she just liked knowing the option was there. _“We could sail the world? You, me, and the open sea?”_

Mal scrunched her face up as she debated it. _“Maybe we could even find an island to rule? I’ve always wanted to be an isle girl.”_

Uma chuckled, enjoying the comedic imagery of Mal with flowers in her hair and a coconut drink in hand. _“Then that’s what you’ll be: The girl from the isle.”_

Content with her title, but not above antagonizing her girlfriend at every opportunity, Mal made sure to slip in with a cheeky gleam, _“You can slap a pirate hat on, but you’re still Shrimpy.”_

* * *

Audrey and Evie formally meet, and it does not go well. 

Mal really expects it to go great because there logically is no reason for it not to other than the universe hating her, but she found an extra pack of icing in her box of toaster strudel this morning, so that might even be easing up! 

(It’s not. She was given false hope, and it hurts twice as bad when things crumble beneath her.) 

With the end of the school year finally here, Mal is faced with the reality of her inability to fairly divide her attention between her best friends. The boys already have a schedule with her for various hoodlum activities and show up unannounced to her home for food on their own accord, but she struggles to keep Audrey and Evie anywhere close to equal when it comes to attention, usually physically spending a majority of non-school hours with Audrey thinking about Evie. 

Her genius solution? Invite the both of them over for a movie to relax before they have to really kick their asses into gear for finals this week. 

She really does believe they could be such great friends before the night begins, and she’s so excited for it because it’s her two favorite girls in one place, but when she shares that with Evie who had arrived an hour early, she does _not_ seem as thrilled. 

“Evie, I thought we talked about this. You said you would give her a chance.” 

Audrey agreed to it, and Mal thought that was going to be her biggest obstacle. Because every other important person in her life thinks that Evie is truly her girlfriend, Audrey gets Mal’s heartbroken mumblings into her shoulder after Evie has left in the mornings about how swept up she feels around the girl she loves. She dries Mal’s tears and pieces her back together when the realization of her relationship being a hoax settles and the little shred of hope she sometimes has that Evie could ever love her back refuses to flicker to life. To say Evie isn’t Audrey’s _favorite_ person? Understatement of the century. But Mal really, really wants this, so she agrees to suck it up and give the girl tearing her best friend apart a chance. 

Jesus Christ, Mal appreciates her.

Evie neutralizes her expression, nodding her head frantically. “I am! I’m so excited, M, you wouldn’t even believe it.” 

Mal narrows her eyes with skepticism, not shifting them when the doorbell rings. “You’re right. I don’t.” She gets up from her seat to answer it, lowering her voice in case it carries. “Please, E, just give her a shot. I really think you guys are going to be such good friends. Just don’t love her more than you love me.” 

Evie softens then, just enough that Mal considers asking Audrey to leave before even inviting her in, and says, “I could never.” 

Mal grins in response and finally answers the door. 

Now, is greeting Audrey with a kiss the best way to say hello when they are not the only ones in the room? No, it is not. 

Is it what she does? Yes, because she’s still thinking about how much she loves Audrey for doing this for her, and she notices the cup holder she has because she stopped at the gas station like the angel she is where she had to have remembered Mal mentioning Evie’s favorite flavor because she sees her signature color peeking out from beneath a lid without calling beforehand to ask, and it’s _still fucking habit! Sue her_. It’s just a peck, a harmless, easy little peck that they brush off with a laugh and Mal takes the icees that Audrey brought, holding Evie’s blue raspberry out with an excited smile like nothing had even happened. 

But Evie looks dumbfounded. 

“I thought that you two stopped…” 

“Oh, we did,” Mal explains nervously, setting the cups on the coffee table since it’s clear that Evie isn’t taking hers any time soon. “That just happens sometimes.” 

It’s truly not a big deal, and it’s certainly not how Mal wanted to be introducing Audrey-

 _Fuck_ , Audrey is just standing behind her now, sipping from her straw as Evie stares at her completely perplexed. 

“That just _happens_?” she scoffs. 

Mal doesn’t really know what’s going on. She didn’t do anything wrong here, or at least she doesn’t think so. “E, why are you-“

“Overreacting?” Audrey pipes up, her straw between her teeth, and Evie’s face goes completely red. 

Mal can see any chance of them ever being friends melt away right then and there. 

“Audrey!” Mal scolds, snapping her head back. 

“What?” Audrey asks, her free hand going up in surrender. “She _is!_ She’s blowing the entire thing out of proportion. If she wants something to get jealous over, we could at least make out a little.” 

“I am _not_ jealous,” Evie snaps, crossing her arms in front of her. 

Audrey scoffs. “Funny joke. Tell another one.” 

Mal frowns, fully facing Audrey and placing her hands on either tan shoulder. “Seriously, princess, stop antagonizing.” 

“Why don’t you make me?” Audrey challenges, and Mal knows that she’s flirting to be a dick right now. It’s because Evie got defensive, and Audrey is over thinking Mal’s heart is being toyed with. 

“Bite me,” Mal quips easily, rolling her eyes, but Audrey is just as quick with a cheeky, _“Not while we have company, dear!”_ and it’s cute, but she’s being annoying, and she’s going to get an earful about it once they’re actually alone.

Mal is mentally preparing to give the same general ‘please be nice’ speech to Evie, but when she spins, Evie has a look she has only ever seen on Uma before. She sees big brown eyes blinking back at her, full of heartbreak she has caused. She spots jealousy, unfiltered, and before she can get a word out, Evie has fled to her bedroom and closed the door, leaving a rather puzzled Mal behind. 

“Well, that went better than I expected,” Audrey mumbles, the jingling of her keys ringing in Mal’s ears as she adjusts her grip on them. She places a small kiss on Mal's cheek. “Call me and let me know how this goes if you make it out alive. Good luck.” 

Mal nods, bravely stepping toward her bedroom after hearing the click of her front door. She’s never been anxious to talk to Evie. She’s just _still_ not entirely sure what just happened. 

She doesn’t knock because it’s _her_ room, no matter how triumphantly Evie just took it over, but she does make sure to _gently_ turn the knob. She can feel the thrumming of her pulse in her ears when she enters. Every light is shut off but the reading lamp on her nightstand. It calmly illuminates Evie’s shaking figure on her mattress, and Mal takes an unsure step in her direction. 

“E?” 

Evie glances up, and Mal’s fingertips itch to swipe away falling tears. She doesn’t want to overstep her boundaries, still puzzled on Evie’s feelings right now, so she settles on sitting beside her. 

“Audrey left… I… Evie, what was that?” 

The blue haired girl sniffles, her fingers fiddling with each other on her lap. Mal reaches over and places her palm over them, curling her other hand beneath Evie’s chin and forcing her to make eye contact. 

“What’s going on with you right now?” 

She knows that the instinctive kiss with Audrey triggered something within Evie. She just can’t for the life of her figure out _why_ . Evie can be a bit possessive, but she has never been so emotional and she was actively _sleeping_ with Audrey at another point in time. What about this little peck hello set her off? 

“Really, Mal? _Her?_ ” Evie scoffs, sounding something suspiciously close to bitter. 

Mal retracts her hands, collecting them into her own lap. “What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“She’s just so... _rude,_ and she doesn’t know a single thing about manners! I don’t know what I was expecting from someone that preys on girls crying by themselves-“

 _“ Evie_ _.”_ Mal glowers with a deep, almost angry glint in her eyes. Her guard slowly is building, frustrated to have to be defending Audrey like this when Evie was the one that had gotten so worked up. “Don’t talk about her like that. She didn’t _prey on me_ . How many times do I have to tell you that _I_ kissed _her_?” 

“Yeah, you made that loud and clear tonight,” Evie sneers back, and as soon as it leaves her tongue, her face hardens even more. “I’m not stupid, M. You can just tell me you’re dating her.” 

This really puzzles Mal. “I’m _not_ dating her.” She just really wants to know, “But what would be the big issue if I was? Why is it such a big deal that we kissed? Why does it matter what I do with Audrey?” 

Evie stays silent, eyes dropping to the ground, and it only eggs Mal on more. 

“Why can’t I kiss her? She knows the truth about us. She isn’t telling anyone. We’ve done far more than that. What is the crime we committed _barely_ kissing hello? Was it the drink that she brought you without asking that was so wrong? Or the thirty seconds of breathing she got in before you were upset with me over nothing? What gave you the right to ruin tonight?” 

Given the choice, Mal has thought that she would choose Evie above anyone else. Since meeting the other girl, she didn’t think she would have to consider it. And, typically, she would automatically be on Evie’s side, but this was supposed to be a good night. Evie _never_ acts like this, and she knows what this meant to her best friend. Evie knows what this could’ve been for Mal, how happy it would’ve made her if she would’ve gotten over her disapproval of Audrey for a few hours and plastered on a grin.

“I’m sorry,” Evie whispers, and Mal can hear her voice break as she tries not to continue crying. “I just… it was like I wasn’t even in the room. You were calling her ‘princess’ and flirting with her and… I’m sorry, M.” She lets out a sigh, and Mal can’t help it anymore. She reaches up, her thumb brushing away a stray tear. “She was right. I was overreacting.” 

Mal’s eyes widen. That was easier to get her to admit than she had expected. Where does she go from here?

“My mother wants me to leave for the summer,” Evie then adds abruptly, and just when the dots seem to be connecting, Mal feels like the room turning upside down. 

“ _What_?”

“I’d go to Colombia to stay with my family,” Evie confirms, and Mal can’t believe her. They were talking just a few nights ago about how excited they were for summer to begin because of how many business trips Evie’s mother had scheduled, leaving Evie without any real social commitments. “I’d be back at the end of August.” 

“E, that’s the _entire_ summer. You can’t be actually considering this,” Mal gapes, but she doesn’t get any sympathy in return. 

Evie’s brows furrow, lips tugging downward as she adds more venom than she has ever used with Mal before. She stands up, ignoring how Mal’s arms hang and go limp when she creates distance between them. “I’m sure you’ll find _someone_ to keep you company while I’m gone.” 

“You can’t be serious…” Is this all really over some petty jealousy? Even if it is, a three month trip out of the country isn’t a spontaneous decision. She and her mother had to have discussed this in length, and she just didn’t tell Mal. Since when do they keep secrets from each other? 

_Aside_ from Mal being in love with her?

Evie starts to walk toward the door, but Mal catches her by the wrist, rising from her seat and stepping forward. 

She knows there’s more to this, so much that Evie isn’t saying, but she’d never force her. She opts instead to wind her arms around Evie’s neck, pulling their bodies close enough that she can rest her cheek against a tan collarbone, peeking out beneath the low neckline of Evie’s dress. 

(If this conversation wasn’t an emotional whirlwind, Mal knows how otherwise distracted she would’ve been.) 

“When I’m in a room with you, usually you’re all that I do see. I never want to make you feel like you’re not even there,” Mal confesses a few moments later, still embracing her. 

Evie deeply exhales, her lips pressed to the crown of Mal’s head. “My mother found out that we’re friends and that I haven’t been spending all this time with Carlos. She thinks that I’m too invested, and she doesn’t want me to _‘waste the summer away’_ with you. We got into a fight about it, and she blames you for me not having a boyfriend. It’s why I came over so early. Then, I saw you with Audrey, and I think I just realized that…” She pulls back, a glow to her skin from the warm hue filling her room. Mal wishes she could capture it somehow. “Maybe I am too invested.” 

She can go without capturing _that_ , though. 

“Do you really feel like that?” Mal can’t get it out much louder than a mumble. She’s _positive_ that she’s more invested than Evie, but there’s no way she can say anything now. She can’t drop that bomb while Evie is struggling to come to terms with _platonic_ emotions for her. 

“I shouldn’t be so upset with you having another friend, even if I’m not fond of her.” She gains a determined look. “I am not going to act like I own you anymore.” 

Mal paints on a smirk, hoping to lighten the mood. “Only in the streets, right? Sheets are fair game? Or better yet- Let’s play officer next?” 

Evie chuckles incredulously, her grip lowering to the smaller girl’s hips as she takes on a teasing tone. “Is that your way of asking to be cuffed?” 

Mal’s brows rise in shock. “Is that your way of saying you _have_ cuffs?” 

Evie admires her for a second, smiling contagiously down at her girl.

Mal foolishly dares to let her heart pretend that it’s with the same type of love that is hammering in her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if i wrote this fic from evie's pov would anyone read it? pls comment if u would i will probably write it regardless bc i sometimes HATE just writing it from mal's and having evie do something and it seem either ooc or just mal being like wow im in love with evie and she don't love me :/ and it's like i'm the author so i know what's in evie's brain too but i already committed to mal's pov so for my own peace of mind i will be writing it from evie's pov just would anyone read it is my question i suppose bc that will decide if i post it or if i just send the link of the google doc to my best friend  
> this chap i have mixed emotions on and would love to hear ur thots hope u enjoy !


	5. blow this popsicle stand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “When I was little, I used to feel like summer would go by so quickly,” Evie murmurs, her steps barely inches apart. “Why do I feel like this one is going to last a lifetime?” 
> 
> Mal stops, pulling them entirely to the side of the walkway and putting Evie’s luggage against the wall. “Okay. New plan. We pull out your credit card, find the cheapest tickets to the most remote island, and we blow this popsicle stand.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this chapter is shorter than the others but for spacing and plot lines it just made more sense to end this one here but to make up for it i added another chapter to the total and the remaining ones will be the regular length, if not longer so it's all good  
> this chap is dedicated to the song heart beats by hey marseilles xoxo

That conversation apparently goes two different ways. 

In Mal’s mind, they end it very positively, the possibilities endless for her and Evie to have various makeup adventures that summer for their first big fight. Evie mentions that she does have prop cuffs from a cop costume she wore to a halloween party a few years ago, but they wouldn’t be very practical, which gets them on the topic of restraints that Evie seems to _love_ the idea of, and then she’s painting a pretty little picture of Mal’s wrists bound that excites her enough to bring it to life with an old scarf she finds in the shorter girl’s closet— 

Needless to say, it’s a _very_ good night. 

Mal thinks that the whackadoo ‘flee the country’ business is off the table, but when she meets Evie the following Thursday morning before school, she comes to see that she is sorely mistaken.

“So, now that you and Audrey have both indirectly apologized to each other and agreed to stop being absurdly difficult, I was thinking we could try for round two,” she grins innocently, kissing her fake girlfriend hello. Technically, Evie gave Mal a basket with freshly baked goods that Audrey threw away because she was afraid of being poisoned, then immediately regretted it after reading the heartfelt card that floated off to the side when she tipped it over the bin and sent an extravagant bouquet back because she is _awful_ in the kitchen. She even signed the card generically so that Evie’s mother would get a kick from the blue haired beauty’s ‘secret admirer’, passing the real envelope to Mal with a private message exclusively for Evie within it that seemed to smooth things over between the two and-

Holy shit... is Audrey stealing her girlfriend?

Evie keeps a neutral expression, and this is where Mal realizes that their previous conversation took an entirely different spin for the other party. 

“Sure, M,” she chirps. “We’ll have to arrange it for when I get back.” 

Hoping to just be wrong, which wouldn’t be abnormal, Mal plays dumb. “What do you mean ‘get back’?” 

Evie quirks a brow. “At the end of the summer.”

Somewhere between the jealous rage and the moderately kinky sex, it apparently didn’t occur to Evie to cancel her trip. “You’re still going?” Mal inquires, trying to hide the emotion in her tone. 

She hasn’t been worrying about this _at all_. She’d been worrying about regular things like finals and her mom and the light on her car dashboard that she doesn’t recognize and is too scared to ask about because she doesn’t want to look dumb.

“Mal…” Evie offers her the saddest of smiles, just barely reaching her lips. “We talked about this.” 

That’s _not_ what happened, but Evie is close to looking at her with pity, so Mal gathers all the positivity she can into a single thumbs up. 

She never does thumbs up. It’s a dead giveaway she’s not okay with it, but she’s not crying. It’s basically a success. 

The warning bell saves her from explaining the odd behavior. “Don’t want to be late,” she comments, delivering a peck to Evie’s cheek and snatching up her bag. She starts her trek across the campus to her locker, ignoring the guilt festering that this is the first time all semester she is not dropping Evie off at the door of her intended classroom. 

* * *

She spirals that night, the logical next step in avoiding the only person she wants to surround herself with for the newly limited time that she can. 

It’s not her usual turmoil, though, but worse.

She honestly wasn’t even going to drink the wine. She was going to move it to the garage to make room for the kolaczkis that she stress prepared after arriving home. Her mom has continued to ease up on her drinking, meaning a party portioned bottle of riesling has been sitting unopened for nearly three weeks, and the dough needs to refrigerate for at least two hours- she likes to do three and a half as a minimum- so it needed to go. Once she actually had the full bottle in her grip, practically a _jug,_ she started thinking about Evie leaving her. 

Evie is _leaving her._

With that fact settled, her rational reminders to text her friends, to ask for help like she knows to do, fly right out the window. She doesn’t care. 

_I’m a teenager,_ she tells herself, plucking the bottle opener from the kitchen drawer. _I’m allowed to get drunk when my heart is broken. I’m allowed to experience this. I’m allowed to feel._

And, with three and a half hours to kill and her mother out of town on business, what does she have to lose? Her only final tomorrow would be gym, and it’s extra credit laps being run. 

_I’m a teenager._

She fumbles with the corkscrew. Her nerves are getting the best of her. 

_I’m allowed to get drunk when my heart is broken._

The _pop!_ makes her jump, and there isn’t any going back now, is there? She certainly can’t wimp out. Her mother has stoppers, but this can’t be for nothing. She’s not stowing the drink completely full.

_I’m allowed to experience this._

She takes a steadying breath, lifting the bottle and tilting it enough to let some of the alcohol hit her tongue. It reminds her of the time Jay left his apple juice in the hot car all day while they were at the zoo and she got dared to drink a sip when they were twelve, only slightly better. 

_I’m allowed to feel._

* * *

It is only fitting that Evie is the one that finds her twirling around her living room, a drunken mess. 

Mal doesn’t even hear the door, too consumed in her rendition of Best Thing I Never Had that she is screaming at the top of her lungs, tears streaming down her cheeks, and she means every single word of it until the second she is faced with the source of her pain. She scrambles to find her phone, pausing the breakup empowerment playlist she has going. 

“I, uh…” Evie smirks with a slight blush, clearly scanning Mal’s bold outfit choice of just taking off her jeans to belt Beyonce in her underwear by herself all night. “I felt weird about how we were today... I knocked a few times, and when no one answered… I see that you’re busy.” 

The issue is that Mal can typically filter herself as she is sober, but right now, all she can see is that glint in Evie’s pretty brown eyes that makes her heart flutter. “Fuck, you’re gorgeous.” 

Evie then spots the nearly empty bottle on the coffee table that she hadn’t before, a carefully formed frown replacing the adoring grin she had been wearing. “You’re drunk.” 

It’s a statement, not a question. She’s connecting the dots from Mal’s half clothed body to her tear stained but lovestruck face. Mal can tell because she’s following where her line of sight goes.

“What does that have to do with you being beautiful?” Mal asks earnestly. “Nothing! I can tell you that answer.” 

She can feel the anger bubbling in her chest standing there staring. Evie is wearing her comfy clothes, swimming in a hoodie that probably smells like a combination of her laundry detergent and the perfume that lingers on Mal’s sheets, like lavender and vanilla and spice and if she just moves a little bit closer--

 _No_. She glares down at her legs for daring to try to bring her closer. The betrayal of Evie’s choices is still weighing heavy on her conscience. 

“M, are you okay?” 

She itches for another drink.

Mal throws up an arm haphazardly. “Just my legs bein’ traitors.” When she goes to tell Evie that it’s nothing to be concerned with, she’s alarmed to see that her best friend is right beside her, ushering her to the couch.  
How’d she get from the front door to right there so quick? Is it magic? Is Evie doing magic now? 

“Do a card trick!” Mal snickers. 

Evie quirks a brow. “Huh?” 

“Or do you just do disappearing acts?” Mal mutters coldly, fingers nimbly reaching out for the remainder of the riesling, which is, luckily for her, just to her right. “No one likes a one trick pony, gorgeous.” 

Evie is quick to snatch the liquor away, placing it on the floor behind her where Mal cannot easily take it back. “Mal…” She tugs her bottom lip between her teeth, and all Mal can do is focus on how badly she wants to kiss her. 

She loves kissing Evie. It’s how she imagines kissing her wife will be one day. That forever feeling courses through her veins, and she never tires of it. She feels high. Sure, she imagines a wife because it’s Evie, but who wouldn’t imagine Evie as their wife? _Everyone_ imagines Evie as their wife. She just knows it. If she were to ask Jay or Carlos or Audrey or anyone on the planet who they imagine as their wife, who would they say? Evie! And she would…

 _Fuck_ , she would absolutely _hate_ that. How _dare_ they imagine Evie like that! They don’t even _know_ Evie like that! And Jay and Carlos are dating _each other_! Boy, does Mal have some choice words for those two about boundaries…

“Mal, are you even listening to me?” 

Has Evie been talking this entire time? Maybe Mal shouldn’t even be imagining Evie as her wife because she’s being a pretty lousy one right now. 

“Please don’t divorce me,” she begs, her lips pouting for the full effect, and these tears welling up might not even be for pity. 

“Oh, M…” Evie sighs softly, her arms opening up. Mal happily falls into them, climbing into her lap clumsily and forcing Evie to sink back onto the sofa with her weight. “If we were married _,_ I would _never_ divorce you. Why would you think that I would?” 

Mal sniffles, her arms winding around her best friend’s torso. She knows she started off her night with Evie singing Best Thing I Never Had, but this is quickly turning into a Flaws and All situation. She offers a meek shrug. 

“Hey,” Evie says firmly, full of conviction, “it’s you and me. Forever. I don’t know what tonight is all about, but I wish that I could fix it for you.” 

She could. Very easily. But Mal isn’t drunk enough to be that selfish. She’s not sure she’ll ever be able to reach a level of intoxication that will allow her to cross that boundary, to ask Evie to compromise anything for her sake. 

She is, however, just far gone enough to give herself one win. She leans back, adjusts herself to properly straddle the other girl’s lap, and stares at Evie, taking in every feature, every eyelash she wants to count. 

Then, before she can regret it, she asks something that sounds so foreign on her tongue. She asks what she’d never ask if she didn’t feel so numb to consequence. “E… whose girl are you?” 

Evie’s mouth parts, the subtlest gasp leaving it. 

Mal allows her thumb to trace along her best friend’s bottom lip, marvelling at how soft and full it is. “Whose girl?” she repeats, this time harsher as she recalls exactly what this win is going to mean. 

She will have tonight, and Evie will have the summer. 

In _Colombia._

Evie is _leaving her._

She doesn’t even have to wait a full minute before Evie breathlessly answers her, heart on her sleeve, ready to be claimed. “I’m all yours, M.” 

And she doesn’t care. 

She will have tonight, and Evie can have her summer. 

She _will_ have her win. 

She gets in close, their noses brushing and breath mingling, and she really does think she has it together- well, she _does_ have it together, right until the end, when in the most defeated voice she desperately begs the girl that she hopelessly loves, “Then tell me… _why_ are you _leaving me_?” 

It’s fitting, too, she thinks, that even when she takes charge, she is still the one begging. She wonders if things will be easier when she’s alone. Will it hurt less? Will she start to drink? Is she turning into her mother? She really doesn’t have the capacity to have _that_ turmoil session with herself right now, not when she can barely sit up straight.

_I’m a teenager._

Silently, she pushes off from Evie’s lap.

_I’m allowed to get drunk when my heart is broken._

She makes sure to take the bottle of wine with her on her way to her bedroom. 

_I’m allowed to experience this._

She doesn’t dare to look back at where Evie sits stunned. 

_I’m allowed to feel._

* * *

She wakes up on her bedroom floor, pantless, spread like a starfish, and still slightly buzzed. 

Her power nap really doesn’t do much but sober her up enough to let her panic and guilt settle in, cozying up to all the insecurity she was numb to when completely wasted, and she’s going to need some water in her if she’s going to have a breakdown. 

What she really needs is therapy, but if she suggests that again, her mother might go on a binge, and this house is only big enough for _one_ episode of alcohol abuse at a time, _thank you very much._

Fuck, she regrets finishing off that bottle. 

A low groan escapes her throat as she forces herself up from the ground, going through the motions of unlocking her door and making the trip down the hall. 

The last thing she expects to see on the other end is Evie still firmly planted on her sofa, legs tucked under her body as she scrolls through her phone absentmindedly. 

Everything floods back; the singing, the compliments, Mal’s insane need to possess that power over her best friend. It’s fuzzy because she’s not _perfectly_ sober, but she _remembers_ , and Evie is still sitting right there. 

That checks out, though. Evie’s benevolence is hardly news to her. 

“You’re up,” the blue haired girl greets, voice heavy with sleep. Brown eyes blink away from the screen and she gestures to the kitchen with a nod. “I set out some ibuprofen for you with a water bottle. I was going to put it on your nightstand, but you locked the door.” 

It’s eerily identical to what Mal would have to do on nights that Maleficent would hide away, but her mother wouldn’t make an appearance until the late afternoon the following day. Mal’s making waves by waltzing out just after midnight. 

“You’re still here,” Mal observes, ignoring the kind deed and taking another step toward the couch. “You have to be up in like… six hours.” Sure, there weren’t any important finals for Mal in the morning, but Evie had both APUSH and English to ace, and how is she doing that without her eight to ten hours of scientifically mandated brain charging that Carlos ordered for everyone this week? “Why are you still here exactly?”

Mal’s fishing, of course. She knows Evie couldn’t leave without making sure she’s okay. She’ll blame it on what little alcohol is still in her veins when she thinks back on it later, but there’s a sweet hum of satisfaction in her brain when Evie sheepishly glances down. Her confident Evie, her so bold and assured Evie, reduced to apple red cheeks and a bashful shrug. 

“I just… I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

She’s playing it cool, so Mal doesn’t fist pump like she wants to. (Or scream “Fuck yeah!” because Evie still cares about her after she was a total dick like she wants to.) (Or kiss Evie for still caring about her after she was a total dick like she wants to, whether it was warranted or not- the jury is still out.) 

“I’m fine,” Mal nods, her most convincing smile in place, and she really isn’t, but Evie needs to go home. She’s caused quite enough drama tonight. 

“You can put your pride away, M,” Evie remarks softly, peeking up through thick lashes. “It’s just the two of us.” 

That’s who it always comes back to, it seems. Her and Evie. _M and E._ Forever, aren’t they? 

“I want it to be,” she pipes up bravely, “- the two of us, I mean.” She moves forward, stealing the spot beside Evie’s curled form. 

“Then it is,” Evie promises, but Mal knows better than to believe that. 

It _was._ It _was_ Mal and Evie; her rose and their beautiful life in Paris they’d invented. Evie is choosing to invent her new life in Colombia for the summer now... _on her own._

“Is it?” Mal prods, not willing to crush the conviction in Evie’s tone just yet. 

“It is,” Evie nods, leaning in ever so slightly. Mal’s breath hitches as slender fingers cup her cheek. “I know that you don’t understand why I’m going away, but please don’t ever think that I won’t find my way back home to you. There isn’t a place on any map where I’m not your girl, through and through.” 

And she won’t take responsibility for this, blaming the _minuscule_ amount of liquor still in her system, too, as she did with baiting Evie for reassurance, but she finally just gives in. She’s exhausted, and Evie is so fucking captivating that it is actually starting to hurt to physically refrain from kissing her, so she surges forward, giving everything she has into their connecting lips.

Evie doesn’t miss a beat, returning the gesture with just as much fervor and letting her hands rest at the base of Mal’s neck, keeping her from deepening it by pulling away just as Mal decides to bring her tongue into play. “You kind of ruined my big speech there…” she chuckles smoothly, pecking away the pout promptly displayed on Mal’s features due to the halt in their actions. 

“You kind of ruined my big mood there,” Mal counters childishly, jutting out her bottom lip in hopes to earn another quick kiss, beaming when her mission is successful.

“As much as I would love for you to get laid,” Evie quips dryly, “I have to try and get _some_ sleep before my finals. Once I get out of school tomorrow, though? I’m all yours.” 

Mal throws a hand over her chest dramatically. “And here I was thinking you were already mine. The audacity of some girls these days…” 

Evie smiles at her then, a wholesome smile with her eyes slightly squinted, and Mal is so close to wishing for her to be gone already, just to want her less. 

Not just out of her house, but out of the country. Out of her mind and heart and everything in between. 

“You’re absolutely ridiculous,” Evie giggles, gathering her phone and purse to get up from her seat. “Can we go cuddle now? Maybe if you ask nicely, I’ll sleep naked.” 

_Oh._ So, Evie is sleeping over. 

“Hey!” Mal defensively calls out. “I _always_ ask nicely!” To be fair, it’s only because Evie _makes_ her with a devilish glint and teasing fingertips brushing along the innermost parts of her thighs, reminding her that _good girls get rewarded, M_ and _good girls ask politely, Mal_ and _don’t you want to be good for me?_

Which she _always_ does because as soon as she says the magic words ( _yes, Evie_ and _please, Evie_ and _I’m yours, Evie_ and _right there, E, don’t stop_ ), she is shown exactly what rewards they are given. 

Evie never has to beg. Mal thinks that she would enjoy it, though, if earlier tonight were any indication. She will have to tuck that away in the corner of her brain and test it again when the opportunity presents itself. 

Mal is ignored, but she doesn’t mind when she catches sight of Evie’s hoodie being pulled by the hem over her head. It flies to the floor to be forgotten in the hallway until morning, and it’s as good as gone now with Mal already locked in on the muscles of her best friend’s back disappearing into her doorway. 

Making a pit stop in the bathroom to pluck the makeup wipes from their place on the counter so that she can swipe away any residue of today from Evie’s skin, Mal elects to wish her away another night, perhaps tomorrow or the next or even after that.

For now, in her brain and her heart and everything in between, it’s just the two of them. 

* * *

Audrey is not impressed when Mal fills her in on her little party of one (then one plus Evie). 

“You guys have a pattern,” she says with finality, not looking up from her nails, and Mal scoffs. 

“A _pattern?_ ” 

Audrey nods with a slight roll of her eyes. “Yeah, babe. _A pattern._ One of you gets mad, lashes out, the other approaches to fix it, the first one is _still_ lashing out, then your sexual tension takes over until you guys forget that you didn’t actually solve anything.” 

Mal gapes. Her and Evie _do_ have a pattern. Audrey is right, and they haven’t resolved a single argument that they’ve held. 

She’s pretty sure that her and Evie are perfectly okay, though? She woke up this morning to a little hangover relief station at her bedside, a purple post-it from her desk stuck on top with a loving _I hope you’re not in too much agony. Breakfast is on the counter (donuts!) and coffee is already in the machine, you just have to press the button. I’ll be back soon. I love you! xx E_ penned across it. If she and Evie were at odds, she doesn’t think that the other girl would’ve taken the extra time this morning to drive Mal back strawberry glazed donut holes before school. 

What a fucking angel. She can be so selfless, it’s astounding-

“Mal! Stop daydreaming about Evie,” Audrey groans, snapping her fingers in front of hazy green eyes. “The next time you call me over because you had a bad night, I’m still coming because you’re my best friend and I love you, but I am _not_ speeding!” 

* * *

After her revelation courtesy of Audrey, Mal is determined to have closure from the argument she had with Evie. 

When Evie is over that night, sitting on her countertop in only a large t-shirt, stealing jam from the bowl that is supposed to be filling the kolaczkis that are finally being finished, Mal tries to bring up what happened between them. 

“Look, E, about last night…” 

But Evie isn’t having it. “You were drunk. We can forget it even happened.” 

Mal’s brows furrow, and she stops rolling out her dough. How can she be so aloof about this?

“Nope,” Evie dismisses, reaching out to brush her knuckle along Mal’s jaw. “Put the pout away.” 

Mal doesn’t want to, though. She wants more than anything to discuss their shitty night, at length, which is now the weirdest thought she has ever explored. 

Unsatisfied with Mal’s static expression, Evie tugs her over by the crook of her elbow and captures her lips with her own. She tastes like the blackberry preserves Mal has been slapping her wrist away from all night, and it nearly leaves her dizzy.

Is that all it’s going to take for blackberries to become her favorite fruit? One kiss? 

Dazed by the interaction, her frown rescinds, leaving a small ‘o’ in its place. 

“Gotcha,” Evie smirks, pecking her again for good measure before taking her seat once more.

“What was that for?” Mal asks breathlessly. 

Evie doesn’t give it much thought at all. “You can’t pout like that and _not_ expect me to kiss it away, M." 

Mal resumes her task at hand, a dopey grin and lovesick flush surely spreading across her face as she accepts the reasoning without objection. 

* * *

When Evie leaves, Mal doesn’t know whose heart it breaks more. 

She is convinced it will be hers, but then she’s pacing through the airport approaching security, both of Evie’s suitcases clutched awkwardly in one hand so that the other is free to cling onto her girl, and the heaviness between them isn’t only on her end. 

Evie’s mother isn’t in town to see her off, both a blessing to Mal and an ache in her heart to see the numbness in Evie’s eyes when she was told to order a car for herself. 

“When I was little, I used to feel like summer would go by so quickly,” Evie murmurs, her steps barely inches apart. “Why do I feel like this one is going to last a lifetime?” 

Mal stops, pulling them entirely to the side of the walkway and putting Evie’s luggage against the wall. “Okay. New plan. We pull out your credit card, find the cheapest tickets to the most remote island, and we blow this popsicle stand.” 

The pad of Evie’s thumb brushes against her favorite dimple. She’ll have to go at any second now. They wasted most of their time refusing to get up from bed this morning so they could put off reluctantly pulling on clothes, getting decent in order to leave so that Evie wouldn’t miss her flight. Mal considered it, but Evie caught the mischievous glimmer in emerald eyes, shaking her head and reminding Mal that her mother would use it as another reason that they shouldn’t be allowed to remain friends. “Why are we using my credit card?” 

“Because I’m the trophy wife. _Duh._ ” 

Evie dips down, replacing her touch with a press of her lips and giving Mal a tender kiss to her cheek. “I’m going to miss you so much.” 

She won’t be able to call or text often, if at all. Without her mother accompanying, she won’t have her hotspot to use for wifi, and because she knows that Evie wants it to communicate with Mal, the matriarch of the Grimhilde household did not purchase an international plan for Evie’s summer trip, instead opting to communicate with her daughter through their relatives while she’s away. She knows that specific aunts and uncles have reliable connections, but Evie is also going to be actively visiting with those family members while given that limited access. She surely won’t be allowed to spend those interactions glued to her screen. Her mother even went as far as to arrange for her to be staying with her grandmother all three months who has no need for the internet, the only technology ever deemed a necessity in her household being her landline and her living room television that gets the same eight basic cable channels. 

“I’m going to miss you, too.” Mal forces a grin, her brightest she can, but it comes up short. There isn’t a torture device in existence that can bend her to reveal why she was stupid enough to ever wish for Evie to be anywhere but by her side. Until very recently, she hated saying goodbye for class periods, and the reality of this being their last face to face encounter for months still hasn’t set in, so she is choosing instead to hammer into her brain that she is _not_ saying goodbye to Evie because Evie is _not_ going anywhere far and she _will_ be seeing her in roughly an hour.

And she is _definitely_ not unpacking the tears forming in the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over at any given moment. 

“Promise you won’t forget me while I’m away?” Evie sounds hopeful, not teasing, and that’s when it resonates that she is just as distraught with her choices as Mal has been this entire time. 

Mal can’t resist, if not only to see Evie break the stoic expression she is holding. She can’t do this if they’re both crying. She won’t even admit that she’s crying, but if Evie cries, it’s game over, so she summons all the sarcasm her crumbling soul has left in it and snarks, “What was it again? Eleanor?” 

She is successful, and Evie snorts, beaming when she pushes on Mal’s shoulder playfully. “You’re such an ass.” 

Her fingertips move on their own accord, caressing Evie’s skillfully carved cheek in awe. “There it is,” Mal mumbles breathlessly to herself, referring to the million watt smile that made every sorrow in her mind momentarily ease. 

Evie’s eyes dart to the clock hanging on the wall opposite them, and her lips form a thin line. 

Mal knows exactly what that means. She takes a suitcase in each hand, holding them out for Evie to grab, and when her limbs are free, she realizes just how little she has to lose. “Hey, E?” 

“Yeah, M?” Evie shuffles through her purse, selecting her ID and boarding pass before glancing back up.

With her entire chest, her heart on the line, she says what she has been harboring for weeks. Evie won’t know the difference, but _she will._ She confesses her deepest secret, her darkest desire. 

In an instant, she gives Evie everything. 

_“I love you.”_

If she didn’t know better, Mal could _swear_ that Evie’s eyes shimmered with hope when she spoke those three words. She could _swear_ that the quirk of Evie’s lips exposed how pleased she was to hear them spoken with such conviction. She could _swear_ that Evie knew that this wasn’t like any other time they’d said it before. 

_If_ she didn’t know any better, but Mal does, so it is nothing less than absolutely predictable that Evie delivers a perfectly adoring, “I love you, too,” right back, none the wiser to the weight behind Mal’s declaration.

None the wiser to her own words that Mal repeats over and over in her mind like a mantra, praying them to whoever will listen that in some way they will stay true.

_There isn't a place on any map._

_There isn't a place on any map._

_There isn't a place on any map._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also new inquiry about the evie pov fic bc i will be writing and posting it, would you guys prefer this fic to be completed before i post any of that one or would you prefer that fic to be worked on/catching that fic up to this timeline then finishing this fic i'm trying to map out posting/writing that one and i just am curious to what y'all would prefer i in no way am saying my muse will cooperate either pls feel free to share ur thots and feelings either in the comments or on twitter (@momager6000) or on tumblr (@missy-bradford) pls and thank you


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